He snatched the phone up the instant it began to ring.
‘Jackpot,’ Roth said. ‘This bloke’s a neighbour, is he?’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I wasn’t too excited at first, because he’s not on our list, but there’s a very good reason for that. The charges were dropped before it ever got to court. So, never convicted. Oh, and for what it’s worth, he also happens to be a fairly major-league smackhead.’
‘Yeah, I caught a whiff earlier.’ Thorne had forgotten all about needing to piss. ‘What charges?’
‘Two years ago, Grantleigh Ralph Figgis was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor.’ Roth left a suitably dramatic pause. ‘Sounding good so far?’
There was a prickling at the nape of Thorne’s neck, soft fingers moving through the fine hairs. He shuddered. ‘Very good.’
‘I haven’t even got to the best bit yet,’ Roth said. ‘Once I found out about the sex offence, I checked with the DVLC and guess what? Your Mr Figgis drives a red Volkswagen Polo. Very similar to a Golf, don’t you reckon . . . if you were on the other side of the road and you didn’t know your way around cars? Tom . . . ?’
‘Yeah, I’m here.’
‘Hang on, the boss wants a word.’
There was a clatter as the phone was laid down on a desk, and a few seconds later Gordon Boyle was on the line.
‘Well, I think we can forget all about your dodgy birdwatcher,’ he said. ‘Fucking . . . dunnocks or not. I’ve spoken to Andy Frankham about this bloke you’ve pulled out of a hat, and he reckons that on a crime-in-action like this one, we’ve already got enough to nick him.’
‘Right,’ Thorne said.
‘So, I’ve already been in touch with local uniform and they’re sending a car to pick him up. Where are you, by the way?’
Thorne told him.
‘Perfect. You stay exactly where you are and, when uniform arrives, you can be the one to put the cuffs on. Fair enough?’
Thorne said nothing. He was thinking about the look of alarm on that pinched, pale face, and how tight those handcuffs would need to be around Grantleigh Figgis’s thin wrists.
‘Good work, Tom,’ Boyle said. ‘Really good, mate.’
Thorne was happy to wait in his car, but knew he had to empty his bladder before doing anything else. He hurried back down Holloway Road towards the side street where he was parked, searching desperately for somewhere suitable, before uniform arrived and things got serious.
He ducked into a darkened passageway between a bookies that was closed and a branch of McDonald’s that wasn’t. As traffic roared past, he unzipped quickly, then thought about the DI’s unusually generous words while he relieved himself.
Good work.
He groaned with pleasure as he pissed against the wall, buzzing with excitement. He leaned back, arcing the jet as high up the brickwork as he could manage, the same ridiculous way he and his friends had done when they were kids.
Before things got serious.
FIFTEEN
Maria wasn’t sure she’d managed any sleep at all by the time Josh began to thrash and moan next to her. She shushed him as he kicked and cried out and she could feel the heat coming off him when she pushed the duvet down and saw that his little fists were tightly clenched. His hair was plastered to his scalp and his pyjamas were soaked in sweat.
Maria laid a hand across his clammy forehead until the cries faded to whimpers. ‘It’s OK, Joshy . . . come on.’
It had been clear for a while how badly her son had been affected by the divorce, by the fallout from it. Just when she had begun to think that things might be settling down, they would ramp up again. A tantrum at home for no reason, a screaming fit in the car, an ‘incident’ at school. She turned to look at Josh as he rolled away from her, snivelling. Now, things looked as though they were only going to get worse because of what had happened to his best friend.
‘I’m here, chicken.’
His only friend, truth be told. Something she and her son had in common, Maria thought, lying there in the dark, though there was at least a reason why he was struggling to form meaningful friendships. Josh had always been something of a loner anyway, happy enough to play on his own, but it would never be easy to get close to anyone when your first instinct was to shout at them, or worse.
I’m sorry, Mrs Ashton, but I have to take the feelings of the poor girl’s parents into consideration. It’s left a very nasty mark and the fact is we simply can’t allow this sort of behaviour to continue . . .
Though neither she nor Jeff had ever resorted to biting, it was perhaps her own memories of shouting, and worse, that made her think about her ex-husband. His first instincts, and her own. Scratchy-eyed and staring at the shape of the lamp above her, Maria decided that it had been nice of him to come round earlier.
Thoughtful, which was not a word she associated with him that often.
It had not been at all unpleasant.
Seeing how very much he cared for Josh, how upset he’d been just before he’d left, had . . . moved her a little. An old-fashioned word, but right then she couldn’t think of any other. She would not have gone as far as to say it had rekindled feelings she’d long since thought dead and buried – that would be ridiculous – but at the very least it was a reminder of why she’d once loved him. Why, despite the selfishness, the snobbery and the rest of it, she was still fond of him.
Josh aside, they still had a connection.
She kicked the duvet off completely and found herself wondering what might have happened if Jeff had stayed for dinner. Had he secretly wanted to? He certainly seemed keen to let her know he wasn’t seeing anybody.
Josh moaned and wriggled close to the edge of the bed.
Maria told herself that she was being very stupid and very selfish. She slid across and gently drew her son back towards her. She wrapped an arm around his hot, skinny waist and kept it there.
Reminded herself that there was only one man in her life who mattered.
Catrin opened her eyes and sat up, uncertain about what had woken her so suddenly, but very clear as to the reason she was reaching immediately for the clot of used tissues on her bedside table. She pressed it to her face, every bit as angry as she was upset. Frustrated and furious at whatever had dragged her from Kieron, or at least some dream of him. It was already fading, water swirling quickly away in a sink, but the details didn’t much matter. She could not even swear that he had been there, next to her or even close, but in the dream, at least, she had been happy.
A dream of before.
When there had been no terror.
No stone, hard and heavy at the centre of her.
She heard a bang, then a metallic clattering from the hallway outside her front door and knew it was the noise that had woken her. Someone kicking at the lift door, it sounded like. Kids, probably; someone coming home pissed.
She got out of bed, pulled on an old T-shirt and knickers.
Now, someone was knocking on a nearby door. She could hear voices raised and others raised still further above them. Bastards . . .
She all but ran towards her door, ready to let rip. She was buzzing with it suddenly and relishing the opportunity to tell whoever was out there exactly what she thought of them, to scream away a little of her pain. To slap and punch and claw it away if that’s what it came to.
The weight of that stone.
She flung open her door and watched a man in a white plastic suit carrying a heavy metal box towards the doorway of a neighbouring flat. It clattered as it was laid down. Not the lift door, she thought as she watched it judder open and saw two more figures in plastic Babygros step out with more metal boxes. She turned when she heard the knocking and saw a pair of uniformed coppers banging on doors, quickly moving along to bang on a couple more while they waited for their heavy knocks to be answered.
One of the coppers noticed her and froze. She wrapped her arms around herself, self-conscious suddenly, half dressed on the landing. The copper
turned away, stepped smartly across and muttered something to his colleague.
There was a quick glance in her direction but no more than that, then the pair of them stood close together looking gormless and uncertain. Guilty, despite the uniforms.
Catrin stared at them, waiting, but they couldn’t look at her.
SIXTEEN
It was past midnight by the time Grantleigh Figgis had been planted unceremoniously in an interview room to answer some direct questions from Gordon Boyle and Ajay Roth.
Heroin aside, nothing of significance had been found during the initial search of his flat and nothing that so much as resembled the ‘jaunty’ cap Felix Barratt had described seeing. By now, though, Thorne knew that a forensic team would be inside looking for evidence invisible to the naked eye and, perhaps more important, another would be examining the arrested man’s VW Polo every bit as carefully. If Barratt was to be believed and Kieron Coyne had been driven away in that car, they would almost certainly find the DNA traces to prove it.
Hair, skin, fibres from a tartan anorak.
Blood.
At the same time, as many uniforms as could be spared by the local boys would be swarming all over Seacole House, searching electrical cupboards, waste-disposal areas. Anywhere the missing boy might have been hidden. They would be attempting to gain access to every flat on each of its dozen floors. Every flat except Catrin Coyne’s, of course.
Thorne grabbed a much-needed coffee and, for five minutes or so, lurked in the corridor outside the interview room. As soon as he was sure that he wasn’t being observed, he leaned close to the door.
‘Just tell us where he is, Grantleigh.’
‘How can I?’
‘Is he alive? Tell us that much.’
‘This is ridiculous. I swear, I thought you were the drugs squad.’
When it became clear there was to be no instant revelation, that Boyle was not about to come crashing out of the interview with Kieron Coyne’s whereabouts, Thorne wandered back into the incident room.
‘Where do you reckon he’s put him?’
Thorne had already marked DC Russell Brigstocke down as the type to call a spade a spade and it was clear that he had not been wrong. He knew that when Brigstocke said ‘him’ he really meant ‘his body’.
He shook his head.
‘Top marks, by the way.’
‘Come again?’
‘Finding Figgis.’
‘He found me,’ Thorne said.
They walked into the small office they shared and, when Thorne sat down, he saw a number of curling Post-it notes stuck to his desk. A CPS lawyer wanted to talk to him about a domestic murder case Thorne was keen to push to trial, but on which the CPS were still refusing to bite. The key witness to an arson attack wanted to let him know she wasn’t quite as certain about what she’d seen as she had been the week before.
Catrin Coyne had called him four times.
Leaning back behind his own desk, Brigstocke told Thorne that he’d been the one to take the messages, that the woman had sounded keen to speak to him. He watched as Thorne dialled.
‘She’ll be pleased you’ve got some good news for her,’ he said.
She wasn’t.
‘The fuck’s going on?’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when—’
‘There’s coppers everywhere.’ It was hard to tell if it was panic or anger that was colouring Catrin Coyne’s voice. ‘Loads of those ones in plastic suits like on Silent Witness or something. There’s stuff happening in the flat next door.’
‘I should tell you that we’ve made an arrest,’ Thorne said.
‘You should tell me? Why the hell haven’t you already told me?’
Thorne tried to explain why he’d been more than usually tied up when she’d been trying to contact him. Why this was the first chance he’d had to call her back. He didn’t get very far.
‘Grant? You’ve arrested Grant?’ She laughed, but there was no trace of humour in it. The laugh of someone who’s just been given a terminal diagnosis. ‘Why would you think . . . ? Grant’s just a bit weird, that’s all.’
‘We haven’t arrested him because he’s a bit weird.’
‘He’s a smackhead, you do know that, right?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘A harmless junkie.’
‘I’m afraid there’s a bit more to it than that,’ Thorne said. ‘He drives a car that matches one spotted by someone at the woods yesterday morning. A child matching Kieron’s description was seen getting into it.’
There was another laugh – somewhat more nervous, dislocated – and now, she wasn’t coming back at him quite so fast. ‘A car? That’s the reason there’s coppers dragging everyone out of bed?’
‘He was arrested before,’ Thorne said. ‘For a sexual offence.’
The pause was even longer this time. ‘What kind of offence?’
‘I’m sorry, but I really can’t go into the details just yet.’ As Thorne listened to Catrin’s breathing, ragged suddenly, he saw that Brigstocke was still watching him. ‘Right now we’re conducting what’s called an urgent interview, and with a bit of luck we’ll know a lot more by the time that’s finished.’ He turned, hearing Boyle’s voice in the corridor, and watched Brigstocke get up and head out to see what was happening. ‘OK?’
‘A bit of luck,’ she said. ‘Right.’
‘Look, I know it’s frustrating, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to let you know more very soon.’ Thorne looked up as Boyle appeared in the doorway, Roth and Brigstocke arriving behind him. Brigstocke caught Thorne’s eye and shook his head. ‘Catrin . . . ?’
‘Worth a try, but sweet FA,’ Boyle said.
Thorne moved the phone to his chest and put his hand across the mouthpiece.
‘So, we’ll let him get some sleep. We’ll bring a doctor in to give him a shot of methadone, make sure Mr Figgis is nice and relaxed first thing tomorrow and have another crack at him. Sound like a plan?’
‘Spot on,’ Roth said, nodding.
Thorne brought the phone back to his ear, but Catrin Coyne had hung up.
‘He’ll give us what we need tomorrow,’ Brigstocke said. ‘He’s just figuring out the best way to play it, same as they always do.’
Boyle yawned theatrically, spreading his arms wide, then nodded at Thorne. He said, ‘You best get your head down as well, while you can.’
Thorne wasn’t sure that getting his head down was an altogether good idea, knowing it would only give the thoughts that had begun rattling around inside it a chance to settle and take hold. Right then, keeping busy felt like the safer option. He said that he was happy to stay on a little longer. He offered to supervise the suspect’s medical visit, but the DI wasn’t having any of it.
‘I think we’ll manage without you for a few hours.’ Boyle was smiling as he turned to leave, yawning again, the two DCs in tow. ‘Now, bugger off home.’
*
There was a somewhat tetchy message from his father on the machine when Thorne got back to the house. The old man wanted to know why Thorne hadn’t been across to see them over the weekend like he’d promised, when his mother had cooked specially. Why he hadn’t so much as bothered to call to let them know he wasn’t coming and what the hell was wrong with common courtesy.
The two messages from Jan were even more bad-tempered.
‘You can stall all you like, Tom, but this isn’t going to go away. We need to do something about the house and you can’t just put your fingers in your ears and pretend it isn’t happening, same as you always do. I thought we were going to be reasonable about this . . .’
Thorne thought he heard the lecturer chipping in, or trying to, just before Jan had hung up. He rewound and listened to the tape again, but he still couldn’t be sure. Just the word ‘come’ maybe.
Come on, why bother even trying to talk sense to him.
Come here, and tomorrow we’ll just call an estate agent ourselves.
Come back to bed, darling .
. .
Thorne stabbed at the erase button. ‘Twat.’
In an effort to delay putting his head down as long as possible – knowing that the rattling was now going to be that little bit louder – Thorne slid a Johnny Cash CD into the stereo and prowled from room to room for a few minutes. When he finally dropped on to the sofa, it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to fight the exhaustion for very long.
He wondered how much sleep Grantleigh Figgis was likely to get, or Catrin Coyne.
Within moments, he was desperate for it.
Thinking about what Boyle had said in his office, and a few minutes later, just as Thorne had been leaving. Boyle and Roth outside in the car park, laughing and smoking, the job as good as done.
‘Go on, get yourself home and put your feet up, mate. You’ve earned it.’
Lying there fully dressed and wanting more than anything for sleep to swallow him up, Thorne was not sure he’d earned anything. For reasons he could not explain and did not want to think about for very long, it felt more as though he owed somebody something.
SEVENTEEN
Kieron thinks the man must have gone out somewhere. He can’t hear him when he’s upstairs, but he’s already used to the scrape when the door opens and the slap of the man’s feet on the steps when he’s coming down. That happens a lot, but it’s been a long time since Kieron heard anything at all.
A really long time.
Hours and hours . . .
He doesn’t like it when the man comes down, but now he’s starting to get scared in case the man’s gone away and won’t ever be coming back. He’s still got plenty of crisps – a whole box of them – and chocolate and biscuits and cans of Coke, but he’s trying to decide if he should start to eat everything a bit more slowly. Make things last longer. Half a biscuit a day maybe and one can of Coke, because he doesn’t know if there’s going to be anything else to eat.
He sits on the mattress and wonders how many days he could go without eating a single thing. How long it would take before he started to look like one of those sad African children he’s seen on the TV. When they’re asking people to send money or old clothes.
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