Cry Baby

by Billingham, Mark

  ‘Stop it, Billy—’

  ‘How is the truth finally revealed? Because, would you believe it, it turns out you can’t even be trusted to take care of him. To do your one job as a mother. Because, while I’m sat in here like an idiot, bragging about what a top lad he is and showing everyone pictures, you turn your back for a little bit too long, because you’re doing . . . Christ knows what . . . eyeing up some stud in the park, most likely, and you fucking . . . lose him—’

  ‘Shut up—’

  ‘Like a bag or a set of fucking car keys—’

  ‘I didn’t lose him.’ Cat sat up hard and glared at the phone, the glob of spittle on it. The fear had given way instantaneously to rage, and she felt something lift as she let it consume her. Had the man she was talking to been within her reach at that moment, she would have punched and clawed and bitten, and she would not have stopped. ‘Kieron was taken, can’t you get your stupid head around that? He was taken.’

  For a few moments, she was aware of nothing but the rasp of her own breathing, ragged and wet. She closed her eyes and waited for it to settle.

  ‘Kit-Cat . . . ’

  She heard something in his voice she recognised. A catch, a change in pitch, a failed attempt to hold it together. She had only seen him cry once, a few years before, clutching an old West Ham shirt and bawling like a baby when Bobby Moore had died.

  ‘Fuck off, Billy,’ Cat said. ‘Fuck off . . . ’

  He had just begun to sob when she hung up.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Thorne and Hendricks stood on a quiet road near the station at Kentish Town West, staring at a house. Thorne turned slowly round to take in the rest of the street, then gazed up at the roof. ‘So, what do you reckon?’

  Hendricks shrugged. ‘Looks all right.’

  ‘It’s the ground floor flat.’

  ‘Yeah, you said. I still think you probably need to look inside—’ Hendricks stopped and watched as Thorne opened the gate and bowled up the path, craning his head to peek through the front window. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t worry, if anyone’s in there I’ll just flash my warrant card.’ He stepped up to the front door and leaned close to peer through the frosted glass. ‘Actually, I could always just tell the owners this address has come up in connection with an ongoing inquiry and that I need to have a look around.’

  ‘Might be a bit suspicious,’ Hendricks said. ‘Not too many coppers are going to be asking what kind of nick the wiring’s in or if there’s any noise from the railway line.’

  Thorne trudged slowly back to the pavement. ‘It’s fine . . . I’ve made an appointment with the estate agent for next week.’ He turned to get a last look at the place. ‘Got another one coming to value the house.’

  ‘Probably the best way,’ Hendricks said.

  There was a shout from the other end of the street, some cheering, then the predictable song. Hendricks joined in briefly and shook his head. ‘Still can’t believe it,’ he said, clenching his fist. ‘We never win on penalties. Never.’

  An hour before, the two of them had been jumping around in Thorne’s front room, having watched the Seaman save that had won the penalty shoot-out against Spain and put England into the semi-final.

  They began walking back towards Thorne’s car.

  ‘Well, we’ve broken the . . . what-d’you-call-it,’ Thorne said. ‘The hoodoo.’

  ‘One game away from the final, mate, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, but if it’s Germany, and if that goes to penalties . . . ’

  Hendricks shuddered, then rubbed his hands together. ‘So, what’s the plan now, then? Pub?’

  Thorne could still hear the singing. ‘I reckon the pubs might be a bit rowdy, don’t you?’

  ‘Rowdy?’ Hendricks smirked. ‘What are you, gay?’

  Thorne unlocked the car. ‘There’s other places round here to get a beer.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘You hungry?’

  The Bengal Lancer was unlike any Indian restaurant either of them had eaten in before. The muzak was almost . . . jazzy for a kick-off and there wasn’t an inch of flock wallpaper anywhere to be seen. Instead, for reasons best known unto themselves, the owners had opted for an arty arrangement of neon lights and – strangest of all – plastic palm-trees, as though this were some flashy seafood place on Coconut Grove, and not a curry house squatting between a post office and a charity shop on Kentish Town Road.

  Neither of them had eaten food like it before, either.

  ‘You should definitely get that flat,’ Hendricks said, a few minutes in.

  ‘I know, right?’

  ‘This is top of the range, mate.’

  They shared a decent selection of starters, then put away dhaba lamb, liver hazri and kalapuri chicken, none of which they’d even seen on any menu before. They each had rice and naan bread and, by the time they’d downed a couple of bottles of Kingfisher and finally admitted defeat, neither was keen, or indeed able, to get up and leave immediately.

  ‘I’m done, mate,’ Hendricks said. ‘Trust me, I know exactly how big a stomach is and I’m seriously pushing it.’

  While they’d been eating, Hendricks had, for some reason, decided that Thorne might be entertained by some largely extraneous material regarding the post-mortem on Dean Meade. It was a mark of how delicious the food was that the pathologist’s detailed diatribe didn’t put Thorne off for a moment.

  ‘Lungs were all but buggered . . . twenty a day man, at least, and his liver was more fat than it was liver, so I don’t think he’d have had much of an innings anyway. Oh, and his last meal was a kebab, if you’re interested . . . and I’m talking just the meat. Just the meat. I mean, what kind of an animal doesn’t at least have a couple of chillis?’

  He’d talked with equal enthusiasm about the body of Grantleigh Figgis, and by the time their plates were being cleared the conversation had inevitably drifted back towards the case to which both murders were closely connected.

  Thorne told him where they were. What they were doing.

  ‘That’s a lot of cars,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘That’s just in the south-east,’ Thorne said. ‘We don’t know the car isn’t registered to someone who lives in . . . Glasgow, or the Isle of Man or wherever. Somewhere abroad, even. We don’t even know for sure that the car is actually registered at all, because there are plenty of ways to avoid it and, bearing in mind what he was using the car for, he might have done exactly that. All we know for sure at this stage is that no car of that colour, make and model has been reported stolen in the last three months and is currently unaccounted for. That’s hardly a surprise, though, because our man’s not going to do what he’s done and risk getting caught for nicking a car, is he? All we know for sure is . . . bugger all.’

  ‘Sounds like you need a bit of luck,’ Hendricks said.

  ‘Always,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Someone who knows this bloke to come forward.’

  ‘They’ve had plenty of opportunity.’

  ‘Maybe the bloke himself. I mean, they do, sometimes, don’t they?’

  ‘I’m not holding my breath.’

  ‘Or else . . . ’

  Thorne nodded. Nobody was saying it, but it was what he and everyone else on the team had begun thinking. ‘Wait until he does it again.’

  The waiter was hovering and, when Thorne looked up, asked if either of them would like to see the list of desserts.

  ‘No chance,’ Hendricks said. ‘I couldn’t even manage the wafferest of waffer-thin mints.’ The waiter stared at him.

  ‘We’re good, thanks,’ Thorne said.

  When the waiter had left, Hendricks turned back to Thorne. ‘Why do people take children?’

  Thorne stared at him.

  ‘I mean, you occasionally read about women who can’t have kids of their own doing it. You know, they get desperate because their hormones are all over the shop and grab a pram outside Tesco or whatever. Why do men do it, though?’

/>   ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Thorne said.

  ‘Right, but is that the only reason?’

  ‘Can you think of another one?’

  ‘Mental illness? Voices telling him to do it . . . or a man might take a child to get back at the mother for some reason.’

  ‘This isn’t that.’ Thorne saw the waiter approaching again. ‘Like I said, doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  The waiter laid down the bill and – ignoring Hendricks’s protestations – a small bowl of mints. Hendricks shrugged and popped one into his mouth. ‘Might, if it helps you catch him.’

  Thorne had been thinking about it, of course, but it hadn’t got him anywhere. Felix Barratt was convinced that Kieron Coyne had known the man who’d taken him. Or maybe Barratt was wrong and the man in question had just been very convincing with his promises of toys and treats. Weren’t children of Kieron Coyne’s age naturally trusting, despite whatever warnings their parents might have given them?

  Stranger danger.

  He remembered his conversation about it with Simon Jenner, and a book with that title doing the rounds, not long after he’d joined the force. Jimmy Savile on the front. A trustworthy face off the telly telling a story about nice fluffy rabbits to make the warnings a little more kid-friendly.

  Barratt was probably right, because Thorne knew that strangers luring kiddies into cars with ice cream and puppies were thankfully few and far between; modern-day bogeymen as much as anything. The stuff of horror films and TV thrillers. Probably, only because Thorne had been doing the job long enough to know they were out there. To know it wasn’t rabbits they were after.

  Hendricks picked up the bill and studied it. ‘We going to split this, or what?’

  When he walked through his front door, Thorne was still thinking about what Hendricks had said.

  Wait until he does it again.

  What he and the rest of them weren’t saying, because snatching another child would almost certainly mean that Kieron Coyne was dead.

  Thinking about it until he saw the red light flashing on his answering machine and listened to the message.

  ‘Tom . . . you know of course that Jan is living with me at the moment and if we’re going to move forward we really need to stop being silly about all this and sort things out. The house . . . and so on. The assets. Obviously, Jan is my first priority at the moment and it’s upsetting to see her . . . in limbo, as it were. So, anyway, I just thought you should know and hopefully you’re already taking the necessary steps. Many thanks . . . ’

  The lecturer. Now the fucking lecturer was sticking his oar in.

  Many thanks? Christ on a bike . . .

  Before he’d even taken his jacket off, Thorne had dug out his address book, looked up the numbers and called the two different estate agents he was dealing with in Highbury and Kentish Town.

  The offices were closed, of course, so he left messages, cancelling both the appointments he’d booked in for the following week.

  SIXTY-TWO

  Kieron and Josh are drawing.

  The man had brought loads of paper and felt-tips and crayons down a few days before, because Kieron had told him how much he liked doing art and stuff. The man said that was fine, that he would go out and buy whatever Kieron needed, because he wanted him to be happy. Kieron had thought that was stupid, because if the man really wanted him to be happy he would take him back to his mum or let him talk to her on the phone, but he didn’t say anything.

  He doesn’t want the man to get cross.

  Kieron has already done loads of pictures – of himself and Josh, of his mum and dad and the flat – but now he’s drawing tunnels. Long swirly ones he thinks they might be able to escape through once they can find something to dig with. He says, ‘Look at this one,’ and holds his finished drawing up for Josh to see, but Josh doesn’t seem very interested. Josh hasn’t really managed to draw anything useful at all, because he’s crying so hard. Just a few squiggles, and he’s making the paper wet anyway.

  ‘You need to help,’ Kieron says. ‘Come on.’

  Josh just shakes his head and carries on crying.

  ‘I thought you were going to help,’ Kieron says. ‘You said how clever we were.’

  Josh can’t even speak. He’s just sitting there rocking backwards and forwards like one of those plastic punching toys and making a noise that Kieron thinks sounds like a dog he saw once outside the Tube that had broken its leg or something.

  Kieron pulls the chain as far as it will go, so that he can get as close to Josh as possible. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’

  Josh looks up at him and wipes his face on his sleeve. He shakes his head and then he starts to really bawl. He stands up suddenly and walks quickly from one side of the cellar to the other, running at the walls, bouncing off them and yelling.

  Kieron waves his arms and tries to shush him. He whispers. ‘We were going to make a proper plan with no superheroes, remember? We—’ He freezes when the door opens and looks up to see the man coming down the stairs. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Kieron says. ‘I told you not to make too much noise.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ the man asks.

  Kieron beckons Josh across and the two of them huddle close, looking at the floor.

  The man stops at the foot of the stairs.

  He sighs and shakes his head, like he’s disappointed.

  He says, ‘Oh, dear.’

  Josh is still crying, even if it isn’t quite as loud as it was before, so Kieron shushes him again. He puts an arm round him to try and make him feel better, but it’s all a bit silly really, because now Kieron is making his own paper wet.

  SIXTY-THREE

  The second quarter-final, between Portugal and the Czech Republic, was the only diversion offered by an otherwise dreary Sunday evening, so Thorne was more than a little irritated when the phone rang ten minutes into the game. He turned the volume on the TV down. He marched out into the hall, ready for another awkward conversation if it was Jan calling, well up for a row if the lecturer had decided to get involved again.

  Looking forward to it.

  ‘It’s Simon Jenner. From St Mary’s . . . ?’

  Thorne was thrown for a moment, then remembered that he had left the teacher his card. He leaned against the wall from where he could see the TV screen through the open doorway. ‘Not a football fan, then?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What can I do for you, Mr Jenner?’

  ‘Nothing specific. I was just calling to see how it was going.’

  Thorne watched a long ball drift out of play and thought how best to sum up an investigation that was, as things stood, every bit as aimless. Looking for a car, no viable suspects . . .

  ‘We’re making progress,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose I was really calling to see how Mrs Coyne was doing.’

  ‘Yeah, she told me you’d been to see her.’

  Jenner hummed a confirmation. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That was very thoughtful of you.’

  ‘Just seemed like the decent thing to do.’

  ‘She said you were meeting for lunch.’

  ‘Yes, we were . . . we did. A couple of days ago. She seemed to be coping fairly well, but it’s difficult to tell, isn’t it. So I thought I’d call to check, that’s all.’

  Thorne thought back to the conversation he’d had with Simon Jenner at the school a week and a half earlier. He wondered if the teacher believed he was connecting with Catrin Coyne as well as he claimed to have done with her son. ‘Like you say, she seems to be coping. I’ll tell her you were asking after her, but it sounds as if you might be seeing her again yourself fairly soon.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Jenner said. ‘We haven’t made any plans.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It was very much a casual thing.’

  ‘Have you thought any more about Kieron, Mr Jenner?’

  ‘Thought any more? I don�
�t—’

  ‘About anything that might have happened at school. He got upset, you said.’

  ‘Oh . . . that’s right. As I told you, he was missing his friend. Or sometimes he was upset just because his friend was upset. I remember him telling me that once.’

  ‘Why was Josh upset?’

  ‘I don’t know. Missing Kieron, I suppose. I never met the other boy, obviously.’

  For a few seconds there was just a faint crackle on the line, until Thorne said, ‘Would you mind telling me where you were on the morning Kieron went missing?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I should probably have asked you when I came to the school,’ Thorne said. ‘Poor police work, basically. If I was one of your pupils, I’d get what . . . an F?’

  Jenner took a moment. ‘Actually, the kids I teach are a bit young for that kind of grading.’

  ‘Well, anyway.’

  ‘You’ll need to remind me. The date, I mean.’

  ‘Saturday, June the eighth.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I think I was away walking that weekend, but let me go and look at my diary . . . ’

  There was a clatter as the phone was laid down, then silence.

  Thorne waited and studied patterns in a hall carpet that was long past its best. He wondered if there was a grade below an F. He looked up and stared through the doorway at the TV screen, and watched as a promising Portuguese attack came to nothing.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Midway through a humid Monday morning, after several less-than-productive hours on phones or at computers – tracing vehicles or trying to find anyone who could confirm Simon Jenner’s claim that he had been hiking alone in the Chilterns on 8 June – Thorne and Paula Kimmel stood together at the tea station.