by Zoe Sharp
There, things became more complicated.
The couple explained they’d given away the bike when their daughter outgrew it. Gave it to the small recycling site near the Co-op supermarket at the edge of town.
“The chap who used to look after the place, he ran a swap system,” the wife explained. “Bring one child’s bicycle in, take away another. Great idea, but the council put a stop to all that, wouldn’t you know it?”
No, they’d no idea who might have the bicycle now and were shocked that their details were still registered with the micro-dot security company.
Nick had crawled along the main street, which was clogged with parked cars and lightweight horse-drawn buggies. He called at the recycling site and was surprised to find one of the current attendants knew the previous custodian.
“This time of day, you’ll find him in the King’s Arms,” the man said.
Nick, who’d just battled past the pub on his way through the town, abandoned his car and walked back, without much hope of a result.
For once, he was surprised. It seemed the old guy who’d once run the recycling facility had a near-photographic memory for people and objects. Yes, he remembered the pink bicycle because it was taken away by a local woman who had a bevy of little girls. Name of Yvonne Elliot.
But no, he didn’t have an address.
Nick had called it in, hoping for more information.
What he got instead was a terse instruction from DI Pollock to detour back to the Hunter Lane station in Penrith and pick him up before going to interview the Elliots.
He still didn’t know why and the longer he left it, the harder it was to ask.
As they neared Kirkby Stephen, the grass verges had been roped off with warning signs for no horse-drawn vehicles posted at regular intervals. Most had been simply ignored, caravans and bow-tops and vardos crammed in wherever they would fit. The ropes and posts had mainly been turned into makeshift paddocks for grazing horses.
Pollock glowered at them.
“Told the Superintendent that would be a waste of time,” he said at last. “Would’ve been a better idea to get a landscape gardening outfit to mow the grass flat. No grass for them to eat—no ponies. Simple as that.”
Nick flicked his eyes sideways. “Sir—”
“I know, lad. You want to know what I’m doing riding shotgun on this one, eh?”
“Er, yessir.”
Pollock swung his arm across the centre console and Nick almost ducked in instinctive reflex. “Take a right here, lad. No point in getting snarled up in the middle of town. We’ll go round by the cattle market instead.” He settled back in his seat as Nick took the side road. “Two words for you—Dylan Elliot. Name familiar?”
“No… I don’t think so.”
Pollock grunted. “It would be, if you’d been around here longer, you can bet on that. He’s a right rascal and ne’er-do-well is our Dylan—like his dad before him. Has a ramshackle old farm further along the Mallerstang valley from where they found that bike.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a bit of history with him.”
“Aye, you could say that, lad. Felt his collar a time or two—receiving, theft, minor drugs offences—but never anything we could really get our teeth into. He’s one of those cocky little sods who’s just clever enough to get away with it, most of the time.”
At Pollock’s direction, Nick wound through a housing estate and turned again, back onto the main road. He was irritated to note they’d completely bypassed the main street with its glut of traffic.
“And Yvonne Elliot is…?”
“His missus. Nice enough to look at, but not the sharpest tool in the shed, as I recall. Married young and has been too busy popping out kiddies to do much else since. They’ve got half-a-dozen of ’em at last count. Five girls and one boy, Jordan. He’s about ten or eleven and a right little tearaway.”
“Grace—er, CSI McColl—seemed to think the bicycle most likely belonged to a boy, sir.”
“Aye, now she is a sharp one, is Grace. That’s why I’ve asked her to meet us up at the Elliots’. Best to go in mob-handed so they can’t claim any kind of breach of procedure later.”
“In that case…thank you, sir,” Nick said. “If it’s their boy’s bicycle that’s been found, well, I’d rather have someone with me who knows the family.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Pollock said sourly. “If it is Jordan Elliot who’s disappeared, then his father is going to try every trick in the book to discredit us now, just so he can claim prejudice or harassment later.”
Nick felt his eyebrows climb. “What about his son? If he plays awkward with us, he could hinder the entire investigation.”
Pollock grunted again. “If there is anything to investigate. Still, I think you’ll find, lad, things like that don’t matter very much to a man like Dylan Elliot.”
10
A woman Grace assumed was Yvonne Elliot took her time to answer DI Pollock’s heavy knocking on the front door of the farmhouse.
She finally yanked the door open, a small child wedged on her hip and lips parted as if about to give her unexpected callers a mouthful of abuse. When she saw who was standing there, however, her mouth closed with a snap and she glared at them all equally.
She was a scrawny woman with a face that might have been pretty before discontentment carved the pinches into her skin. An old bagged shirt hung off one shoulder and there was a stain on the front that Grace didn’t need a swab kit to know was probably baby vomit. She had long bare legs and dirty feet jammed into flip-flops.
“What the heck do you lot want?” she demanded. The child’s face crumpled in response to the sharp tone. Yvonne began what might have been intended as a comforting jiggle. “If you’re after my Dylan, he hasn’t done nowt. He’s here—and he’s been here all day and all last night an’ all!”
“It’s not your husband we’re looking for, Yvonne,” Pollock said. “Not this time.” His voice was gentle, somehow all the scarier because of it. “May we come inside?”
“You got a warrant?”
“Oh…do we need one—if your Dylan hasn’t done nowt?”
She scowled at the three of them for a moment longer, then seemed to fold, her bravado exhausted by this brief display. Underneath it, Grace saw trepidation leaching through.
“Come on then, if you must,” Yvonne said, and turned on her heel, scuffing back along the darkened hallway. Pollock stepped inside, ducking under the lintel, and followed.
Grace gestured for Nick to go ahead of her. She was still clinging to the hope that her presence would be unnecessary. Regardless, she knew he needed to catch the expressions on these people’s faces when they were first hatched and unguarded. Grace’s task, if required, would come later.
Now, she merely observed. The house was generally dirty, that dark ground-in line at the edges of the carpet, the thick scab of dust on the skirting board and the grubby swathe running along the ancient wallpaper at the height of a child’s hand. Dust highlighted the cobwebs that draped from every corner.
Yvonne led them through a door at the rear of the hall, into a sitting room crammed with mismatched furniture, including two three-seater sofas and an oversize TV. The space was made smaller still by the low ceiling, the beams bowing downward at the centre. Grace stood back by the doorway and watched the two policemen barely resisting the urge to crouch.
As they entered, a man lounging on one of the sofas lurched to his feet. He was small and wiry, his dark hair long enough to curl around the ripped collar of his T-shirt. His eyes darted between the now-blocked doorway and the open windows on the far side of the room. More out of habit, Grace judged, than any real attempt to plan an escape.
“Aw, ’Vonne!” he protested. “What you doin’ lettin’ this lot in?”
“Oh, give it a rest, Dyl’. What was I s’posed to do with ’em?” She flopped down onto the other sofa and pulled the little girl she carried onto her lap. The child had a cute face and dark curls li
ke her father, flattened on one side where she’d slept on them. “’Sides,” Yvonne added, her voice turning whiny, “he said”—she jerked her chin at Pollock—“it weren’t about nothin’ you’d done.”
Dylan Elliot straightened, pulled back his shoulders. He was half a head smaller than the two detectives but more in scale to the room. That point seemed to bolster his confidence, Grace considered, despite the unannounced visit. “So, what is this about, then…Pollock?”
The DI heard the insult in the way Dylan over-pronounced his name and bared his teeth. No humour there but no animosity, either. He had too many years under his belt to be so easily offended, although Nick looked offended enough on his boss’s behalf.
The little girl on her mother’s lap reacted to the increased tension in the room by staring at the interlopers with wide eyes and jamming one finger up her nose.
Pollock glanced at Nick and said mildly, “If you’d like to inform the Elliots of the reason for our visit, Detective Constable Weston?”
Ah… Nicely done.
By deferring to an officer who was his junior—and making sure Dylan was aware of the fact—Pollock deftly put the man in his place.
“We are enquiring as to the whereabouts of your son, Jordan, if you wouldn’t mind, sir?” Nick said.
“Why?” Grace caught a hint of alarm from Dylan. “What’s the little bugger done now?”
“We have reason to be…concerned for his wellbeing.”
Yvonne clutched at the toddler on her lap. “What does that mean? Dyl, what’s—?”
“Shut up,” Dylan snapped, without taking his eyes off Nick now. “But yeah, what does that mean? What’s happened?”
“If you wouldn’t mind answering the question first, sir.”
“I should think he’s at school,” Dylan said. “Where else would he be?”
“But you don’t know for sure?” Nick insisted. Grace didn’t miss the way Yvonne’s gaze latched onto her husband’s face and stayed there. “When did you last see him?”
“Last night,” Yvonne said, subdued now. “He had his tea, same as normal. He’d been…difficult, like, when I picked ’em all up from school, so I let him play out on his bike—after.”
“Difficult? What was that about?”
She gave a shrug. “He saw the Gypsies was camped at Water Yat when we drove past and he wanted to go down there. He liked the horses.”
“But you said no?”
She flushed, flicked her eyes toward her husband. “Dyl’ don’t like him hangin’ around with ’em.”
“Too right,” Dylan said. “Bunch of tinkers and thieves, the lot of ’em.”
“Did you see your son again after he went playing outside on his bicycle?”
“’Course. He came in and went to bed about nine-ish—usual time, same as the girls. Well, our Jess gets to stay up later but she’s the eldest, so—”
“Did you actually see him go to bed?”
Dylan’s snort was derisive. “The boy’s old enough to put his’self to bed. Don’t need tuckin’ in and readin’ a story.”
Yvonne bit her lip. “I looked in on him just before I—we—turned in, ’bout half-ten.”
“What about this morning? See him then, did you?”
Yvonne’s face twisted. “N–no. I thought he’d got up early and gone to school on his bike. He does that sometimes, see…”
“So, you haven’t seen your ten-year-old son since last night, and his school say he didn’t turn up this morning,” Pollock said, his voice flat. “And now a bicycle we believe belongs to Jordan has been found, a couple of miles away, having sustained what evidence suggests is impact damage from a collision with another vehicle.”
He didn’t mention the blood but he didn’t need to. Yvonne let out a small shriek and clamped both hands over her mouth.
“What do you mean, you believe it belongs to him. Is it his or not?”
Pollock turned and nodded to Grace. Knowing this moment would probably come, she’d already downloaded one of the images of the mangled gold bicycle to her phone. Now, she stepped forward and showed the screen to Dylan, saw all she needed to from the way he flinched in response.
“Aye, that’s his bike,” he said. “Where was it found? And where’s the boy?”
“Water Yat,” Nick said, mispronouncing it as off-comers often did—“water” as it was spelt, rather than the local’s harder “watter”.
“Where the bloody gyppos was set up,” Dylan said. “I told you not to let him keep goin’ down there.”
Yvonne, suddenly finding her voice again, cried, “Just shut up, Dyl’. There’s nowt wrong with the Travellers. It’s you who—” Dylan jerked to face her and she broke off abruptly.
“Who what, Mrs Elliot?” Nick asked.
Dylan glowered. She glanced across at him anxiously before muttering, “Jordan was always wantin’ to be off down there, while the Gypsies were around. There’s a kid comes every year with one of the families—boy about his age—and the two of ’em are sorta friends.”
“I didn’t want the lad mixin’ with ’em,” Dylan said. He shifted his glare to Nick, reproachful. “Everyone ’round here knows what they’re like—the trouble they cause. I don’t know why your lot didn’t move ’em all on days ago.”
“For pity’s sake, Dyl’, you’re like an old woman repeatin’ all that tittle-tattle,” Yvonne shot back at him. “There’s nowt wrong with the Travellers. Folk, just like the rest of us—they gotta be somewhere.”
Grace caught the momentary surprise in the tilt of Nick’s head. Not at Dylan’s prejudice but at Yvonne’s lack of it.
Interesting…
“And you’ve no idea where your son might be now?” Nick asked. “Other friends he might be with? Places he liked to go?”
The Elliots shook their heads silently.
“Was this usual behaviour for Jordan—taking himself off or cutting classes?”
“No, he always seemed to enjoy school, like,” Dylan said, an element of bemusement in his voice. Yvonne gave a kind of hiccuping sob.
Grace cleared her throat. “I’ve been collecting forensic evidence from…where the bicycle was found,” she said carefully. “I need something of Jordan’s so I can isolate him from anyone else who might have handled it.”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of ‘evidence’?”
Grace stared back without a flicker. “Well, fingerprints, for a start. Do you have anything only he’s likely to have touched? Some personal item like a toothbrush, perhaps?”
Yvonne got to her feet, hefting the little girl onto her hip again. “Upstairs. I’ll show you.”
Grace climbed the creaky staircase behind her. The carpet runner up the centre of the treads was worn flat and was threadbare at the half-landing. There were four bedrooms and a family bathroom. Yvonne nodded to a door covered with hand-drawn signs saying ‘Keep Out’ and ‘No Girls Allowed’. Grace put down her crime-scene kit and pulled a pair of nitrile gloves out of her back pocket.
Inside, the room smelt of unwashed male, sweat and old socks. It was clearly the smallest room, with barely enough space for a single bed and a set of sagging shelves dotted with school books, artwork and painted action figures. A rail for hanging clothes went from wall to wall across the foot of the bed. It was not much used, with shirts and jeans and discarded underwear strewn across the floor.
The little girl wriggled to be put down and, once that aim had been achieved, made a beeline for the overflowing window ledge. Just in time, Grace spotted the jam jar crammed with pens, paintbrushes and pencils, and a green toothbrush with splayed bristles. She whisked the toothbrush out of the child’s reach and bagged it.
“It’s not much but he’s the only one gets a room to his’self,” Yvonne said from the doorway, watching as Grace looked about her. “The girls have to share, and Dyl’ and me still got the baby in with us in her cot, like.”
“How old is this little one?” Grace asked as the child latched onto her t
rouser leg at the knee.
“She’s four. Startin’ school in September, aren’t you, Ollie?”
The little girl nodded vigorously. When Grace bent to deposit the sealed bag in her kit, she transferred her grip from Grace’s leg to around her neck and clung on. Grace had little choice but to lift her into her arms as she straightened. The child, small but surprisingly weighty, grabbed a lock of Grace’s hair, studied the red of it with absolute attention, and stuck it into her mouth.
Grace was not entirely comfortable around small children, never having any of her own. She and Max had skirted around the subject during the time they were married. Grace had never actively tried to prevent conception, but it hadn’t happened and he hadn’t pressed. She liked other people’s well enough. She wasn’t sure if it was the knowledge that she must soon hand them back that stopped her getting too broody.
“Aw, she likes you,” Yvonne said.
“Mm,” Grace replied, retrieving her slightly soggy hair and pushing it back behind her ear. “Would you have a current photo of Jordan we could borrow?” She saw the hesitation and added, “I can copy it and let you have it back.”
“Oh, all right, then. I’ve got one the school took—that’s probably the most recent, like. It’s on me dresser.”
She turned and went into another bedroom. As soon as she’d gone the little girl leaned close to Grace’s ear and whispered, “We shouldn’t be here.”
Grace glanced at her in surprise. “Oh, why not?”
“’Cause this is Jordan’s room and he don’t like nobody to come in.”
“That’s OK, sweetie. Jordan’s not here at the moment so I think we’re safe.”
“I come in sometimes, when he’s at school,” the child admitted with a shy smile. “But he’ll be back very soon, though.”
Grace tried to maintain her own smile. “Yes…I’m sure he will.”