THE LOST BOY an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Lee-Anne,’ he said, as kindly as he could, ‘you can’t “put on” that kind of fury — because that’s what it is. When Lobo smiles and laughs and shakes his head “like it’ll come off” — you know someone’s going to get hurt, don’t you?’

  She pouted. ‘No . . . He’s a good laugh.’ But they both heard the edge of desperation creeping into her voice.

  ‘A good laugh.’ Mike considered this point, cupping his chin in one hand. ‘Is that what you were doing when you broke into Angeline Fournier’s house — having a good laugh?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  He leaned in, closing the distance across the table, robbing her of the safety of distance. She raised herself from her accustomed slouch, a look of alarm on her face.

  ‘You were seen, Lee-Anne.’

  She looked away and the furrow deepened between her eyes.

  ‘We’ve got several witnesses willing to identify you,’ Mike went on.

  Two bright spots of colour appeared on the sharp blades of her cheekbones. Mike recognized it as temper. ‘You were seen around the Fournier house. Lobo was caught with Ms Fournier’s credit and debit cards on him, and your flat looks like it’s had a make-over by Changing Rooms.’ She glanced up at him, an eager look of flattered gratification on her face, and Mike, disgusted that she could forget so easily that her gain was at the expense of someone else’s life, made the mistake of showing his dislike.

  Her expression hardened. ‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘Prove it.’

  Mike leaned back, knowing that he had lost this round. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘Just watch me.’

  * * *

  Mike interviewed Lobo immediately after, while his adrenaline was still high. This was more formal, of necessity. Since Lobo had been charged, his solicitor had been appointed and Lobo, conscientious about the proper execution of the law and well versed in the provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, had insisted on him being present. Jack Hughes was in the wrong job: he believed in the inalienable right of every British citizen to protection under British Law, but he worked on first impressions, and if he didn’t like the thug he was asked to represent, he just couldn’t hide it. His real name was John, but one of the custody sergeants had given him the name, in one of his rare lighter moments, and it seemed so appropriate that now everyone called him Jack — though not to his face.

  ‘Fuckin’ snob Paki dropped me in it, has he?’ Lobo gripped the table’s edges, bending his elbows and leaning forward.

  Mike studied him with genuine curiosity. Gargoyles and goblins came irrepressibly to mind. ‘You might want to remind your client to curb his racist comments,’ he said, looking at Jack.

  Mr Hughes had a whispered exchange with his client.

  Mike exchanged a look with DC Douglas. ‘Witnesses will testify that you took a pool cue to Mr Merembe’s car and, when he tried to intervene, you used it on Mr Khan.’

  ‘He asked for it.’

  Mike chose not to draw attention to the implied admission and was amused to note that Mr Hughes seemed to be of the same mind.

  ‘How did he ask for it?’ Mike asked, in a tone of genuine interest.

  Lobo began rubbing his palms backwards and forwards, smearing the edges of the table with grime and sweat. ‘He started on that poncey course, didn’t he?’

  ‘It was my understanding that you had lost touch,’ Mike said. ‘And that you didn’t know what Mr Khan was doing until you met him yesterday, outside the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.’

  Lobo snorted, ignoring the logic of Mike’s statement. ‘LIPA,’ he said, working himself into a rage. ‘Liverpool Institute of Poncey Arseholes, more like!’

  ‘So, he asked for it,’ Mike said, careful to make the intonation a statement, rather than a question.

  Lobo stopped the compulsive chafing of his palms against the table. He placed both hands on the table and looked straight at Delaney. ‘I should’ve kicked his fucking head in.’

  Mike could smell his breath. It reeked of alcohol and vomit and the bitter acid of jealousy.

  Jack coughed, politely, clearly embarrassed by his client.

  Mike straightened up, exhaling hard to clear the stench from his nostrils. ‘Cue’s wrecked,’ he observed mournfully.

  Lobo darted him a quick, cunning look.

  ‘And unfortunately, it isn’t going to be so easy getting a replacement, now you’ve lost your gold card.’

  Lobo slipped back, his hands sliding off the table in a fluid, nerveless movement into his lap. He’s lost colour, Mike thought. Seems like I’m pushing the right buttons.

  Lobo balled his fists and began cracking each knuckle in turn.

  DC Douglas handed Mike an evidence bag containing Jeanne-Louise Fournier’s cards, sliding Lobo a sideways glance as he did so, smiling a little to himself. Lobo must have sensed the look. He caught Douglas’s eye, his anger blazing out briefly, but he seemed to think better of acting on it and stared down at his hands and resumed cracking the joints with increasing ferocity.

  ‘Recognize these, do you, Derek?’ Mike asked.

  Lobo began chewing the inside of his mouth. His eyes, refusing to obey him, flickered up, up, to the bag and the cards inside. Mike saw his forced effort to look away.

  Douglas was watching Lobo implacably, as they’d agreed he would — that lazy smile on his face — and opposite Mike, Jack Hughes had also turned to look at his client. He seemed perplexed, waiting for an answer. Surely Lobo had told him about the cards?

  ‘Mr Spencer?’ Mike said.

  ‘I never seen them before.’

  ‘They were in your wallet.’

  Lobo shrugged, looking down again, avoiding the three pairs of eyes watching, watching.

  ‘You signed for them when the custody sergeant asked you to turn out your pockets.’

  ‘They’re a plant.’

  Mike laughed softly. ‘You used this one’ — he tapped a Visa card through the bag with his index finger — ‘to buy the cue.’

  Lobo turned down the corners of his mouth. ‘Not me.’

  ‘You’ve been identified. Once seen, eh, Lobo? It was a bit lax, using the card like that, when you could’ve got cash — or asked Lee-Anne to do the buying.’

  Lobo pressed too hard and his little finger gave an exceptionally loud crack. He grunted, but his expression never changed.

  Mike watched him sweat for a few moments. ‘But I’m forgetting, you had a row with Lee-Anne yesterday morning. Couldn’t very well ask her to go and get you the cue when she wanted you to get shot of the cards.’

  The horror on Lobo’s face was a rare treat. It was quickly displaced by rage.

  ‘Bitch!’ he spat.

  ‘The assistant who served you was a bit lax an’ all,’ Mike said. ‘Not noticing that the card belonged to a Miss J. L. Fournier. All he did was check the signatures tallied. Which they did. I bet you were good at copying in school, weren’t you Derek?’

  Lobo lifted his head and glared at Mike, grinning, but Mike grinned back with equally feral menace. ‘Where did you get the cards, Derek?’

  ‘I found them.’ Lobo looked away.

  Mike raised his eyebrows. ‘Found them,’ he repeated. ‘Found them where?’

  ‘I don’t know. In the street.’

  A second mistake — a second concession to the truth that could be used against him. Mike saw sweat pop out of the thug’s forehead as he realized that control was slipping from him.

  ‘In the street,’ Mike repeated. ‘Precisely where?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Hey.’ He turned to face his solicitor for the first time since they had entered the room. ‘Aren’t you supposed to stick up for me?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Perhaps, Mike thought, Jack Hughes had been disabused of his idealistic notions of fairness and innocence until proven guilty too soon and too decidedly by an early experience representing an out-and-out villain. He couldn’t s
ee the young lawyer remaining a duty solicitor for long: he was far too sensitive — and far too inclined to take sides against his clients.

  Lobo stared open mouthed. ‘What do I want?’ he began. ‘I don’t know, do I? I’m not a lawyer, am I? Tell him he’s being argumentative, or somethin’. Badgering the witness—’

  ‘You’re not a witness, Mr Spencer, you’re a suspect,’ the solicitor said. ‘And this isn’t a court of law.’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me!’ Lobo folded his arms, scowling.

  ‘Answer the question,’ Mike said, playing the unreasonable advantage the solicitor was giving him. He was half inclined to feel sorry for Lobo, but not enough to stop him following through. ‘Where — exactly — did you “find” the credit cards?’

  Lobo sat with his head down, staring up at Mike. His eyebrows were angled to a V in the centre of his forehead, and the maniacal grin covered a jumpy nervousness and a great mass of guilt.

  Mike slid the evidence bag across the table. ‘Can you read the name on the cards, Derek?

  ‘I can read.’ Lobo said belligerently, taking offence at the implied slur on his intellectual abilities.

  ‘Then read the name.’

  He tried to stare Mike down, but when he realized he wouldn’t win, he shrugged and reached forward with an indolent movement.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ Mike said, sharply.

  Lobo’s eyes narrowed and Mike focused on them, glittering with rage. He wondered that Lobo could cope with it, burning like a bone-dry furnace within him day and night. He half expected to see signs of cracking — tiny fissures in Lobo’s face. Had Jeanne-Louise been the escape valve?

  ‘I can’t see from there,’ Lobo snarled.

  Mike tilted the bag. ‘J. L. Fournier,’ Lobo said, pronouncing it ‘Fornear’.

  ‘Jeanne-Louise Fournier,’ Mike repeated, thoughtfully. He retrieved the bag, frowning at it as if trying to remember something. He could see the solicitor in the periphery of his vision, staring at Lobo’s profile. Behind the professional mask of impartiality, Jack Hughes’s animosity was palpable.

  ‘It was you, knocking on doors round Mossley Hill a week ago last Friday, wasn’t it?’ Mike asked.

  Lobo gave him a look of troubled innocence. ‘Knocking on doors. What for?’

  ‘We’ll get to the reason in a moment. Let’s just establish facts,’ Mike said. ‘Was it you?’

  A pause, then, ‘No.’

  ‘That’s not what Lee-Anne says.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  The grin was back, and Mike was well on the way to thinking he’d like to stop it with his fist.

  ‘Something funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, you are.’

  ‘Care to share?’

  Lobo thought about it. ‘Lee-Anne can be a spiteful bitch, but she’s not soft. She wouldn’t drop herself in the shite.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mike quickly gave the concluding details of the interview and switched off the tape. ‘We’ll set up an ID parade,’ he said, addressing the solicitor.

  They had a number of witnesses who thought they could identify the young man and woman seen near the Fournier house on the night of the murder. Since Lobo had already been charged with assault he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Lobo eyed his solicitor in a decidedly threatening manner. ‘That all right with you, Mr Spencer?’ he said, laying on the sarcasm with a trowel. ‘I mean, it is your right to refuse.’

  ‘Er, yes,’ the solicitor said. ‘I would have to discuss the pros and cons of agreeing to an ID parade.’

  ‘No need, mate. I’ve made up me mind — I’m not doin’ it.’

  Mike smiled. ‘Two of our witnesses are willing to meet you face to face, Mr Spencer.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want that,’ the solicitor hurriedly intervened. At least in a line-up there was a chance that one of the others would get picked out. Narrow the field to one and the outcome was more certain.

  ‘How would you know what I want? You’ve sat there squinting down your big beak at me like I’m somethin’ smelly you got on your shoe.’

  ‘You’re mistaken, Mr Spencer, I assure you—’

  ‘You callin’ me a liar?’

  Mike interrupted. Retrieving the tapes from the recorder, he said, ‘I’ll leave you two to discuss strategy.’ He exchanged a glance with Douglas, managing — with an effort — to keep his face straight. ‘The constable will wait outside the door. If you need him, just shout.’ His final impression of the solicitor was of the whites of his eyes flashing an SOS signal.

  Chapter 31

  Vi held the receiver in place with her left shoulder as she made rapid notes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’ve got it.’ She listened. ‘I don’t know. An hour? An hour and a half?’ She hung up and put a trembling hand to her mouth. Her upper lip was moist. She was sweating.

  Money for Connor. That’s what he had said. Money for a child, as simple as that. Vi quelled a wave of nausea. She would have to agree. He knew that she had no choice. So, there would be a straight swap: her son, purchased for cash, like a piece of baggage.

  * * *

  Fraser had given up — even got as far as leaning forward to start the engine — when Vi’s pale blue Mercedes convertible pulled out of the drive with the top open. Vi in sunglasses and scarf, looking like a fifties film star. So, she had got her call. Was she going to meet her husband? He had to know. He waited for a delivery van to pass before pulling out. She wasn’t looking in her mirror anyway. She drove like fury out of Hale towards Widnes, over the Runcorn Bridge, and into Cheshire. Part of the way, she drove along the M56, and Fraser had a few heart-stopping moments, trying to gauge the speed of following traffic before pulling out to keep her in sight. She joined the M6 and headed south, turned off at Knutsford and drove down country lanes, eventually turning into a narrow track with a sign, which read ‘To Avonlea Farmhouse’. He waited for a few minutes, then drove the Volvo onto the grass verge and started walking down the track.

  Harvey was smaller than Fraser remembered. He had first met Vi when one of Fraser’s A-level geography teachers’ seminars had coincided with a business conference at the same hotel. Bill Harvey had been there to promote his new plastic moulding technique. Fraser even remembered the conference title: ‘Fantastic Plastic’.

  Vi had apparently despised her husband and his business, but she loved his money, or more accurately she loved to spend it. So, she had attended the conference under protest. He had fallen into conversation with Vi at one of the hotel’s bars, where she was sulking because she felt Bill was ignoring her. That weekend he had signed a contract with a major toy manufacturer to provide them with moulded plastic packaging for a range of dolls and figures. He didn’t have time to pander to his wife and she wasn’t used to being sidelined. Fraser had been angry and frustrated that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to broach the subject of adoption with Jenny, and because he couldn’t accept this as a weakness in his own character, he’d blamed his wife. He understood that now.

  Vi and Fraser had used each other. It was a no-strings, no-holds-barred fling. When she had told him she was pregnant, that had changed for him, but not for Vi. He was convinced that she had told him only to gauge his response. Since he wasn’t going to leave Jenny, she told him she wanted an abortion. He pleaded with her, but the next time they spoke, she told him with icy control that it was done.

  Eight years. He’d had a son for eight years and hadn’t known. Instead, she had let Bill Harvey believe that Connor was his own. She must have resented carrying a child, ruining her figure for the sake of the only kind of security Vi craved or respected. Until now, evidently, she had considered the pay-off worth the deception and the inconvenience. Vi had her own distinctive set of values, and Harvey had proved a much better bet, financially, than Fraser. Bill had been an ambitious, driven businessman, whose energy was almost overwhelming. Handsome, slim, always smartly dressed and, Fraser remembered, sporting thick, wavy hair. It was hard to equate that image with t
his balding, middle-aged, slightly corpulent man. He looked respectable — even a little staid — in his linen slacks and pale blue, short-sleeved shirt. The wind riffled the cuffs as he raised his arm and waved to someone in the distance.

  Fraser followed his line of sight. In the field, beyond the garden of the house, was a boy. Fraser ducked down, his heart racing, and crouched behind the fencing that bordered the track to the house. Harvey shouted something to the boy, but the wind carried his words away and Fraser couldn’t make it out. The boy smiled, returning the wave, then he turned and ran, disappearing into a dip in the terrain. Moments later, a kite sailed up from the field and lifted higher and higher.

  * * *

  Connor ran with his kite. Inside him was a knot of excitement, like a tangled ball of string. He laughed, feeling the wind tug at him, lifting the kite, trying to pluck it from his fingers. He loved this place, and he loved the sun on his back and the wind buffeting him, and he loved his daddy. He turned and waved again, even though his daddy had already disappeared beyond the hill, and laughed delightedly as he tugged at the kite string. It soared like a bird, whirring and buzzing, the line carrying the vibrations from the fabric to his hands.

  * * *

  ‘I suppose the first attempt was staged to frighten me,’ Vi said. ‘Or to throw the police off the scent.’ She stood in her husband’s sitting room, speaking directly to him and ignoring the tall, fastidious presence of their solicitor, Jeremy Byatt.

  ‘It was a mistake, Vi — an error of judgement on my part. But what did you expect? You tell me I’m not the father of my own child and in the same breath you say you’ll take him away from me.’

  ‘Evidently the actions of a loving and concerned parent.’

  ‘I would never have done it if you hadn’t threatened to take Connor away.’

  She smirked, remembering the satisfyingly confused emotions on Bill’s face when she told him, ‘All right, you can have your divorce. I shan’t contest it, but you know you have no claim to Connor.’ She had kept her brief fling with the handsome young Scot from him all those years, had held the child as a kind of trump card, an ace up her sleeve. Her affairs since then had been more discreet — less passionate, perhaps, but safer. ‘I hate to sound petulant, but you started it.’