Andy Frankham was waiting for them at the desk.
He looked keen to get into it.
As detective chief inspector on the local major incident pool, operating out of Islington, he was the de facto SIO on the case and would have begun setting up the operation before Thorne had left the pub, putting together a team while extra uniforms were still being drafted into Highgate Wood, in the hope, if not the expectation, that it would never be needed.
Frankham introduced himself to the two women, softly spoken, but all business. Maria Ashton stepped forward to shake his hand, her son moving with her, clinging to her coat.
Catrin Coyne simply nodded, looking past the DCI towards the uniformed officer behind the desk.
‘I’m not stupid enough to tell you not to worry,’ Frankham said. ‘I’ve got kids myself. But I just want to assure you that I’m going to use every resource available to find Kieron.’
‘Thank you,’ Maria said.
Thorne saw Catrin Coyne glance at her friend, caught a flash of something that seemed like resentment.
It’s not your son that’s missing.
He saw understandable anger in the way the younger woman stood frozen to the spot, heard it in her breathing.
If you’d been watching them, like you were supposed to . . .
‘Right now, it’s important that we get some initial statements, fast.’ Frankham nodded towards the boy. ‘Most importantly, from Josh.’
Maria drew her son close. Said, ‘Joshy? You want to tell the policeman what happened in the wood?’
The boy lurched away, as if he was sulking about something. He wandered over to a noticeboard and stared up at it for a few seconds, his back to them, before edging across to a row of moulded plastic seats and dropping into one.
‘He’s upset,’ Maria said. ‘It’s understandable.’
Now, Catrin Coyne turned and stared at her.
‘Absolutely,’ Frankham said. ‘Only natural. Right, I’ll leave you with Detective Inspector Boyle and the others for the time being. If you feel you need to talk to me at any time, about anything at all, just let one of them know.’
Maria nodded, reddening as Catrin continued to stare at her.
There was a somewhat awkward hiatus, before a WPC came out of a side door to show the two women and the child through to the interview rooms.
Frankham watched them leave, then turned to Thorne and the others. He said, ‘Let’s get this done on the hurry-up, all right? I’m heading back to the office to make sure everything’s set up and I’ll let you know when I’ve arranged somewhere we can get the evidential statements.’
‘Right you are, boss,’ Boyle said.
‘We’ll need a social worker,’ Roth said. ‘Video suites, what have you.’
‘Thanks for that, Ajay.’ Frankham’s tone was polite enough, while making it perfectly clear he knew exactly what was needed. With his slight frame and thick glasses, the DCI had the air of an academic and reminded Thorne of a geography teacher he’d had at school. Thorne would not have wanted to cross him, though.
‘Let’s have you then,’ Boyle said. ‘I’ll take the mum . . . Ajay, you talk to the friend.’ He pointed to Thorne. ‘See what you can get out of the kid, Tom. What you can glean.’
Roth smiled.
Thorne could easily imagine crossing his immediate superior. Though in this instance, crossing was a polite word for it. The fantasy usually consisted of staring down at Gordon Boyle in some dimly lit back alley while the Scotsman spat out several teeth.
‘Sir,’ Thorne said.
A minute or so later, on their way to the interview rooms, they passed an office where a group was gathered in front of a TV set. Boyle put his head round the door and asked the question. He closed the door and the three of them carried on walking.
‘One nil to your lot,’ he said, looking less than thrilled about the situation. He muttered the offending name as if it were that of a notorious serial killer. ‘Shearer.’
‘Please, Mrs Ashton.’ Thorne saw Maria Ashton open her mouth to speak again and raised a hand. She had already given her own brief statement to Ajay Roth, but clearly had plenty more to say. ‘Please.’ He had warned the woman before they’d entered the room that, at this stage, they only needed to hear from Josh; that she was simply there to put her son at ease and that any prompting or encouragement on her part could easily affect what he told them and harm the investigation going forward.
‘Sorry,’ Maria said. She leaned towards the portable twin-cassette recorder on the table. She said ‘Sorry’ again, then sat back, shaking her head at her own idiocy.
Thorne nodded to let her know it was OK, then looked back to the boy.
‘So, why did you and Kieron go out of the playground?’
From statements given earlier at the scene, it was clear that the boys had left the play area at the far side and run into the part of the wood that bordered the underground tracks. Rather more disturbingly, it was no more than fifty yards from an exit onto the Archway Road.
‘There’s nowhere to hide in the playground.’ The boy was kicking the table leg every few seconds and fiddling with a toy car that he’d dug from his pocket when they’d sat down.
‘You wanted to play hide-and-seek?’
Uniformed officers had already begun house-to-house enquiries on the stretch nearest the exit and posted hand-drawn appeal boards asking for information. It was a very busy road.
‘No.’ Josh shook his head firmly. ‘Kieron wanted to play.’
‘Kieron ran off to hide, did he?’
Another shake of the head, as though Thorne was being silly. ‘I did.’
‘Oh . . . well, hiding’s more fun, isn’t it?’
‘I’m a better hider than he is.’
‘OK. So, where did you hide?’
Josh glanced up then went back to his car. ‘There’s a big tree you can get inside. I’ve been in there before.’
Maria Ashton began to cry again. Thorne gently pushed the box of tissues towards her but kept his eyes on the boy. ‘Did Kieron find you?’
Josh shook his head. More slowly this time.
‘Do you think he couldn’t find you?’ Thorne waited. ‘Or do you think he wasn’t looking?’
Josh shrugged, chewed his lip.
‘I mean, it sounds like a fantastic hiding place.’
‘Yeah, but Kieron knows that’s where I hide sometimes, and I didn’t even hear him.’ The boy grunted and raised his arms in a gesture of delayed amazement. ‘Like, you can always hear someone when they’re looking, because of the branches and the crackly leaves and everything. But when I was inside the tree it was really quiet.’
Thorne could feel the eyes of the boy’s mother on him, sense her efforts to make as little noise as possible as she cried. ‘How long do you think you waited, Josh?’
‘Like a long time.’
‘OK.’ He thought about the location of the area where Josh had been hiding. He leaned across the desk. ‘Did you hear any trains go past?’
A slow and solemn nod. ‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
The boy scrunched his face up, trying to remember. ‘Two, I think.’
Thorne knew that trains ran up and down that stretch of the Northern Line regularly. ‘So . . . five minutes, maybe? Something like that?’
Josh nodded. ‘It was ages.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘I came out of the tree and tried to find Kieron. I was shouting him and I ran back to where he was when he covered his eyes and started counting.’ The arms were raised again, and he widened his eyes, suitably mystified. ‘He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.’
‘That’s when he came out of the woods,’ Maria said. ‘When Cat and I went looking.’
Thorne ignored her. ‘Did you see anyone else in the woods, Josh?’
‘There were lots of people,’ Josh said. ‘The funny old lady with the smelly dog. Loads of people.’
‘In the trees, I mea
n. After you left the playground.’
The boy shook his head.
‘Are you sure?’
Maria leaned forward. ‘He said all this back at the wood.’
‘Did you see Kieron talking to anyone?’
‘He told that inspector before you arrived.’
‘Can we go home now?’ Josh asked.
Thorne reached across and turned off the cassette recorder.
Having finished his interview with Catrin Coyne, Boyle was waiting with Ajay Roth in the corridor outside. He said, ‘Interesting.’
‘What is?’
‘Turns out the mum’s old man is currently at Her Majesty’s Pleasure and not for the first time. Did eighteen months for GBH seven years ago and he’s currently doing a ten-stretch in Whitehill for attempted murder.’ He shook his head. ‘Right nasty piece of work by the sounds of it. Beat seven shades of shit out of some bloke who cut him up on the North Circular.’
‘Nice,’ Roth said.
‘So?’ Thorne asked.
Boyle looked at him.
‘You think he might have escaped from a Cat A prison and abducted his own son?’
‘I said interesting, that’s all.’ Boyle stuck a finger into his mouth, began working at something stuck between his teeth. ‘Because it is.’
‘Did Mrs Coyne say anything to make you think it’s something we should be looking at?’
‘Ms Coyne,’ Roth said. ‘His name, but they’re not actually married.’
‘Living in sin.’ Boyle had finished his probing and turned his head quickly to spit something out. ‘Well, they were, until he got banged up.’
‘Did she?’
‘Look, I was just trying to find out what happened in the woods,’ Boyle said. ‘Same as you were. She happened to mention his name, so I ran it through the PNC upstairs.’
‘Fair enough,’ Thorne said. ‘Good to know, I suppose.’
Boyle seemed irritated suddenly. ‘I tell you what, Tom, why don’t you take Ms Coyne’s evidential statement?’
‘The boss rang through ten minutes ago,’ Roth said. ‘It’s all set up for the social services centre behind Upper Street. The cars are waiting for us outside.’
‘Yeah, if you want,’ Thorne said. He clocked the DI glancing conspiratorially at the DC. He knew that he was meant to clock it.
‘I don’t know . . . maybe you can shake her hand.’ Boyle gave up trying to conceal the smirk once he saw the look on Thorne’s face. ‘See what you know.’
FOUR
There was no need to go over what had happened four hours before at Highgate Wood. Thorne knew by now that Catrin Coyne had seen nothing. He knew, equally well, like someone gnawing at a mouth ulcer, what she would almost certainly be imagining.
What might have happened.
The worst, always the worst.
Now, the job compelled Thorne to dig away at her most terrible fears and drag them out into the light. To ask, with all necessary sensitivity, the very questions that would give them credence. He felt like he was whispering through a loudhailer and tiptoeing around a worst-case scenario in size ten Doc Martens.
‘So, was Kieron . . . OK?’
‘OK?’ The woman stared at him. ‘What does that even mean?’
Half an hour into it and she had clearly had enough. Perhaps she craved some time alone to process her agony in private or else wanted to share it with friends and family of whom Thorne was, as yet, unaware. With a few hours of light left, she might well just be desperate to get back to Highgate Wood and join in the search. Or maybe she simply failed to see how answering stupid questions would be of any use in getting her son back and did not understand why this detective was asking them again.
‘Were there any problems at school?’ Thorne asked.
‘Not really.’
‘So, some problems, then?’
Thorne had done his level best. Before they’d started, he had explained that this second round of more in-depth interviews was crucial, without spelling out exactly why. He had told her that their conversation was being recorded – like those being conducted elsewhere in the building with Josh Ashton and his mother – because it might prove important later on. That this was just the way it had to be done. The woman was not stupid, Thorne could see that, but all the same he took care to avoid specifying that these were evidential interviews and would be the ones presented in court, if and when her son’s disappearance resulted in a person or persons being brought to trial.
On . . . whatever charge.
That necessary sensitivity again.
‘He had a bit of trouble settling in, but that was a couple of years ago.’ Catrin Coyne had seemed fired up back at the woods, ready to fight. Now she looked washed-out and weary. Thorne knew she was not quite thirty, but right now she might have been ten years older. She tugged at her short, dark hair; shrank down inside the Puffa jacket she had kept on, though the room was far from cold. ‘He didn’t like not seeing as much of Josh, that was all really. Still doesn’t like it.’
‘Where’s the school?’
‘In Tufnell Park. I tried, but I couldn’t get him in to the one Josh goes to.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Thorne said. ‘They’re obviously close friends.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’re close friends with Josh’s mum.’
She let out a low, short hum. She looked away and shook her head, though it seemed to Thorne like a gesture of confusion or disbelief rather than a hard denial. He understood that, in situations such as the one she now found herself in, it was natural to lash out and look for something – or better yet someone – to blame. Watching her eyes close as she shrank a little further into her big, blue coat, Thorne guessed that the anger she had felt towards Maria Ashton was subsiding a little and that she had begun to blame herself for trusting someone else – however close – to watch her son.
A seeping wound that, in time, would give her a nice, fat scab to pick at.
Thorne glanced up at the clock, at the red light glowing on the video camera mounted next to it. He said, ‘Is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt your son, Catrin?’
Her eyes snapped open. ‘What?’
‘Sorry, but I do need to ask.’
‘He’s a seven-year-old boy.’
‘OK . . . is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt you?’
She sat back and folded her arms, stared at him for a few seconds. ‘No.’
‘Nobody at all?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Tell me about Kieron’s father,’ Thorne said.
She nodded, sighed as though she’d been waiting for this. ‘Do I really need to? I mean, you obviously know all about him already.’
‘I’d like you to tell me.’
‘Look, Billy’s a really good dad, all right?’
Thorne tried to maintain a blank expression, but clearly he didn’t quite manage it.
‘Yeah, OK, obviously he’s not around now, but when he was. He loves Kieron to bits . . . loves both of us.’
‘He clearly has a capacity for violence, though. So, I hope you can understand why we’d want to find out a bit more about him.’
‘He lost his rag that one time.’
‘It was more than one time, Catrin.’
‘That first one was nothing,’ she said. ‘The GBH, so-called. One too many in the pub, that’s all, and it wasn’t him that started it. The road-rage thing was stupid, I grant you. He knows that.’
‘So, never anything like that at home?’
‘I told you—’
‘With you, or . . . ?’
‘Billy’s never raised a hand to me and he would never touch Kieron.’ She shook her head and sat back hard. ‘Never.’
‘Understood,’ Thorne said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t get it, anyway.’ Suddenly, the woman looked fired up again. ‘I mean, the poor sod’s sitting in his cell right about now, so how can this be remotely useful?’
Thorne nodded. Wasn’t that more or less what he’d said to Boyle? ‘Like I told you, I have to ask.’
There was a sharp knock on the door and Ajay Roth poked his head around. He needed a word. Thorne suspended the interview and told Catrin Coyne that he’d be back as soon as he could.
Outside, Roth said, ‘I’ve already told the boss, but I thought you should know, we’ve had to knock it on the head with Josh Ashton.’
‘Because . . . ?’
‘Poor little bugger’s wiped out. It’s like talking to a tiny brick wall.’
‘Has he been given something to eat?’
‘Yeah, course. Social worker made sure he had a sandwich before we started, but she still doesn’t think he’s up to it. Doing more harm than good, she reckons.’
‘Maybe he needs some chocolate or something.’
Roth nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought, get some sugar in him. Couple of cans of Fanta or whatever, but his mum said he’s not allowed fizzy drinks.’
‘Orange juice?’
The DC shook his head. ‘Him and his mother are already on the way home, mate. She says she’ll bring him back first thing in the morning.’
‘Right.’ Thorne stepped back towards the door of the interview room.
‘How’s it going in there?’ Roth asked.
‘Yeah, well, I thought she was starting to shut down a bit as well, but she’s perked up. So we’ll see.’
Before Thorne had a chance to open the door, Gordon Boyle came bowling round the corner, slurping from a plastic cup of coffee. He looked at his watch. ‘How much longer d’you reckon?’
‘Another hour, maybe,’ Thorne said.
‘Right,’ Boyle finished his coffee, looked around for a bin. ‘I’ll get a car organised to take her home. Find someone to go with her.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Thorne turned to Roth. ‘Fancy coming?’
Roth said he didn’t have anything better to do.
‘Up to you,’ Boyle said. ‘Usual procedure when you get there though, yes? You know what we need.’
‘Let’s be gentle.’ Thorne looked at Roth. ‘All right?’
‘As a baby, mate.’
Thorne turned back to the door.
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