Like, a week, or something?
The room’s starting to smell really bad, too. Up until the last time he’d gone to sleep, the man had been down a few times to take him up to the toilet, but that was ages ago, so he’s had to start going in the bucket by the door. He’d tried to hold it in for as long as he could, but it had really hurt after a while and now he’s started to worry about what’s going to happen if the man doesn’t come down again and the bucket gets full up.
He holds his breath for as long as he can.
He pulls his anorak over his head to try and block the stink out.
He knows the time would go faster if he was doing something, it always does, but he’s pushed all the toys and books into one corner, because he doesn’t want to play with them any more. He can play for ages with Josh, all day sometimes, but he doesn’t want to touch those stupid cars or the Game Boy again, because the man bought them and the man lied to him.
Lied to him a lot, and that’s bad.
The man told him this would be like a holiday. Better than a holiday. Told him they could eat pizza with pineapple on and watch TV together; that he had loads of channels, probably way more than Kieron had at home. Kieron had told him that was really expensive and his mum always says there are better things to spend money on. The man had said the money didn’t matter and Kieron remembers thinking that was funny.
He remembers laughing, and the man laughing, too.
Now, Kieron feels like he’s going to cry, but he breathes hard and wraps his arms around his chest until the feeling goes away. He doesn’t want to do that any more, either. He cried quite a lot to start with, way more than he ever does at school or anything, because he doesn’t like being on his own, especially in the dark. After a while, though, he didn’t want the man to keep coming down, so he’s been trying to stay quiet. Now, he only cries when it’s impossible not to, like when he thinks of things that make him miss his mum and because he’s fed up waiting for her to come and get him.
The man said she was coming. Promised him.
Then suddenly he thinks, that’s where the man’s gone and as soon as he thinks it he knows it has to be true, and begins to feel a lot better. He reaches for a bag of crisps, tears it open and starts to eat, getting happier with each mouthful. He smiles, not bothered about the dark and the smell quite so much any more, because that must be what’s going on.
Like a surprise, Kieron thinks, because he’s been such a good lad and done what he was told.
The man’s gone to fetch his mum.
PART TWO
What’s The Time, Mr Wolf?
EIGHTEEN
It was not as if he’d been given much chance to make himself presentable when he’d been arrested and taken from his home the night before. Certainly not enough time to pick out a suitable outfit.
But even so . . .
Grantleigh Figgis had on the same sleeveless pullover he’d been wearing when Thorne had first spotted him lurking in the doorway of his flat, those same grey tracksuit bottoms. A far cry from the Sunday best of Felix Barratt and his finicky ilk. Thorne struggled with the temptation to ‘accidentally’ drop a pen, then lean down to see if their suspect was still sporting the furry slippers, which – unless there was a specialist Nan Unit of which Thorne was unaware – were certainly not the favoured footwear option of too many being questioned by a murder investigation team.
Though of course they knew very well that it was not the first time that the man sitting across from them – anxious and fidgety, next to a somewhat bored-looking duty solicitor – had been inside an interview room.
And they were not counting the previous evening.
Boyle told Figgis he was being interviewed under caution, then said, ‘Tell me about Kevin Scott.’
Figgis groaned and stiffened a little in his chair. ‘That little shit.’
‘Right,’ Boyle said. ‘That little shit you sexually assaulted two years ago in a public toilet.’
Suddenly, Jeremy Prosser, the duty solicitor, looked a little less bored. He sat forward. ‘Accused. My client was accused of sexually assaulting Mr Scott. The charges were quickly dropped, as you very well know, Detective Inspector.’
Boyle shook his head. ‘Slip of the tongue.’
‘The charges were dropped because they were entirely malicious.’ Figgis looked at Prosser and then at Thorne, perhaps believing, albeit mistakenly, that of the two detectives in front of him, Thorne was the softer touch. ‘Scott was the one who ended up getting done, later on.’
Boyle waved it away. ‘No worries.’
‘Tried it on once too often—’
‘OK, well we’ll leave all that for now, shall we?’ Boyle turned over one of the sheets of paper in front of him. ‘Let’s move on.’
Boyle was an insufferable arsehole, but this was unquestionably an arena in which he thrived and Thorne knew exactly what the DI’s game was. Happy to acknowledge his oh-so-innocent mistake and to move on, having lodged the memory of a painful incident, however legally insignificant it might prove to be, front and centre of his suspect’s mind. Figgis looked every bit as shaken as Boyle wanted him to be, though he had hardly been a picture of poise or confidence to begin with.
Watching him sit down fifteen minutes earlier, Boyle had leaned across and muttered to Thorne; delighted with himself as he summed up the man’s appearance with his usual pith and wit.
‘He’s shitting it.’
Thorne had been unable to argue.
Though far from being an expert, Thorne wondered just how much of a substitute methadone could ever be for heroin. He wasn’t convinced that, if he was desperate for a pint or three of Tennent’s Extra to stave off the heebie-jeebies, a can of Shandy Bass would do the trick, and Figgis certainly did not look as if he’d had a comfortable night in any sense. His face looked paler than it had done the previous evening, his hair greasier. He was wide-eyed and jittery, and that voice – soft and well spoken – had a catch in it.
Walking into the room, he’d looked like a man being poked towards the edge of a cliff.
‘Let’s talk about Kieron Coyne.’ With the subtlety of a flying mallet, Boyle glanced across at the pile of morning newspapers he’d laid on the table before the interview had begun. Each had been helpfully opened at the story dedicated to the search for the missing boy and the individual responsible for his disappearance. The photograph provided by Catrin Coyne was prominent on every page, and though the stories varied in style and emphasis, depending on whether the paper had a red top or not, there were certain words common to almost all of them.
Hunt. Snatched. Nightmare.
Figgis did exactly as Boyle had been hoping and looked across at the newspapers. He tentatively reached across as though to pull one towards him, stretching out his thin fingers, before drawing his hand back at the last moment. He swallowed hard, said, ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything that might help,’ Boyle said.
‘I want to help,’ Figgis said.
Boyle leaned back. ‘Well, we shouldn’t have a problem then.’
Thorne picked up the cue. ‘How well did you know Kieron?’
‘Pretty well, I suppose. I’m closer to his mum, obviously.’
‘You were close, then,’ Boyle said.
‘Sorry?’
‘To the boy?’
‘Not in the way you’re suggesting.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything.’ Boyle shook his head as though disappointed at being so terribly misjudged. He looked at Thorne. ‘Just asking questions.’
Prosser sighed. He was doodling.
‘Has Kieron ever been inside your flat, Mr Figgis?’ Thorne asked.
‘No . . .’
‘You sure about that?’ The forensic team was still working in Seacole House and, though they had not discovered any evidence immediately damning, they would certainly be able to match any DNA found in the flat to the sample provided by Kieron’s mother. If Figgis was lying, it would be easy enough
to prove.
‘Well, he might have run inside once or twice, just for a few seconds when I was talking to Cat by the front door.’
‘Right.’
‘Maybe he came in with his mum once. I can’t really remember.’
‘But he’s never been in your flat on his own.’
‘No.’
‘Just the two of you, I mean.’
‘No, never.’ Figgis had been hunched over in his chair and staring down, as his finger traced a pattern in the metal tabletop, but now he straightened up and looked at Thorne. ‘Absolutely not.’
Boyle turned over another sheet of paper, studied the page for a few seconds. ‘How’s your memory this morning, Mr Figgis?’
Figgis looked at him and shrugged. ‘Fine.’
‘Because last night you told us that on Saturday morning, when Kieron went missing, you were at home in your flat with a man you’d met the previous evening.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I only ask because last night you couldn’t really remember very much about him.’
Figgis sighed, scratched at his neck. ‘No, because I didn’t know much about him. Because I’d only met him on Friday night.’
‘Alan, you said.’ Thorne waited until Figgis looked at him. ‘His name was Alan.’
Figgis nodded, closed his eyes as he repeated the story he’d told them the night before. ‘Alan, correct. I met him Friday night at the Astoria and he came back to mine. We had sex—’
‘Did you take drugs together?’
‘Well, I can’t see what that has to do with anything, but yes, we did.’
‘Just trying to get the picture,’ Boyle said.
‘We had sex, we went to sleep, I made him a late breakfast the next morning, and he went home. That’s it. I don’t know his second name, I don’t know what he does for a living, I don’t know where he lives. I know nothing about him.’
Boyle could not suppress a smirk. ‘Just what he likes to get up to in bed.’
Figgis stared back. ‘That’s the way it is.’
Boyle let out a long breath, like he was shocked. ‘Is it?’
‘This is . . .’ Figgis stopped and breathed deeply for a few seconds. For the first time he looked more irritated than frightened. ‘It’s ridiculous. Why the hell would I want to hurt Kieron? Or Cat? She’s my friend and he’s . . . well, he’s a lovely boy.’ He looked to Prosser, who immediately dug into his pocket for a handkerchief and passed it across.
‘Take a moment if you need to,’ Prosser said.
Figgis dabbed at his eyes with a hand that was visibly shaking and, when he spoke, his voice was cracked and whispery. ‘It’s ridiculous. It’s just not . . . fair.’
‘Was Kevin Scott a lovely boy?’ Boyle asked.
Prosser rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ The solicitor was about to continue, but Figgis cut him off.
‘Yes, he was.’ There was a degree of power in his voice suddenly. ‘At least I thought he was.’
Boyle nodded. ‘See, I’m just the old-fashioned sort, a bit of a romantic, I suppose you’d say. I can’t help wondering why you’d be hanging around in a public toilet trying to have sex with a seventeen-year-old boy?’
Prosser said, ‘That was never proved,’ but Figgis did not seem to be listening.
‘Because I’m a homosexual.’ Figgis said the word slowly, relishing it, but at the same time imbuing it with the disgust he presumed it would instil in the Scotsman, that he had presumably seen it instil in others like him. ‘It’s what some of us do, now and again, if there’s no other way. It’s very risky, of course, because the likes of Kevin Scott can take advantage. On the occasion you seem so very keen to talk about, I was offered sex, by a boy I firmly believed to be older than seventeen.’ He leaned towards Boyle, the handkerchief now balled in his fist. ‘He made it very clear what he wanted, but as soon as I reciprocated, he backed away and announced that he was only seventeen. He said he wanted money and that unless I gave him everything I had on me he was going to call the police and tell them I’d . . . molested him. I told him to go right ahead, so that’s exactly what the little bastard did. He laid it on nice and thick and I was arrested. The police officers, who I should say were rather more assiduous than you, worked out what was going on rather quickly, and after a good deal of unpleasantness the charges were dropped. All’s well that ends well, right? Except of course it doesn’t end, because that arrest is still a matter of record. A stain that doesn’t go away. Because the likes of you are still able to drag it up whenever it suits them and do their utmost to use it against me.’
Thorne watched as Figgis leaned slowly away, dropped his head back and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Heavenwards. He’d seen no indication that the man was remotely religious, but it seemed, at that moment, as though he might have concluded that divine intervention was his best and only hope.
‘That’s all very helpful, Mr Figgis,’ Boyle said. ‘So, thank you.’
Now, Thorne watched Boyle gather his pieces of paper together then tap the edges against the tabletop to get them good and straight. He knew the way the man worked, the strategies that he believed would yield results, especially when he believed wholeheartedly that the person he was dealing with was guilty. Get them rattled, then wear them down.
Boyle said, ‘Right. Let’s start again, shall we?’
An hour later, Figgis on his way back to a cell, Thorne stood with Boyle next to the coffee machine. The DI was fired up and full of it, happy with his game.
‘He’s sharp,’ Boyle said. ‘Give him that much. All that business about how Kieron might have popped into his flat once or twice. He knows full well that if and when we find the boy’s DNA in there, he’s covered, because he told us about it. The car’s a different matter, though. We find evidence in there, he’s not got a leg to stand on.’
‘Maybe he just told us that because it was the truth,’ Thorne said.
Boyle looked at Thorne as if he’d just suggested the Earth might actually be flat. He brandished his sheaf of notes. ‘Right, I’m away to get this lot typed up.’
There was plenty of material. Over the course of a two-hour interview, they’d talked in further detail about the nature of Figgis’s relationship with Kieron Coyne, enquired about the movements of his red VW Polo, and tried without success to elicit more information about the mysterious Alan.
‘So, what’s next?’ Thorne asked.
‘Let’s bring your birdwatcher in, shall we? Try to put a few holes in Figgis’s so-called alibi.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Should just about put the tin lid on it, I reckon. Then we go back at him, find out what he’s done with the boy.’
‘We should see if we can find this bloke he picked up.’ Thorne stuck a few coins of his own into the drinks machine. ‘Says he picked up.’
Boyle nodded, looking at something in the notes. ‘Yeah, obviously.’
‘Get someone down to the Astoria, find out if anyone there knows him or can remember seeing Figgis leave with anyone.’
‘No bother,’ Boyle said. ‘I’m on it.’
As Boyle was about to leave, Thorne said, ‘If some woman came on to you in a public toilet, you’d be up for it, wouldn’t you?’
‘What would a woman be doing in a men’s toilet?’
‘Come on, you know what I’m saying.’
But Boyle was already turning away, grinning.
NINETEEN
At the same time as Gordon Boyle was strategically laying out a selection of the Monday morning papers in an interview room at Islington station, a single copy of the Daily Mirror was being set down rather more forcefully on the sixth floor of a tower block two miles to the south; slapped angrily on to the coffee table in Catrin Coyne’s living room.
‘Were you going to tell me?’
‘There were other people needed telling first,’ Cat said. ‘His father.’
‘I’m his father.’
‘No.’ Cat sat forward
and shook her head, but took care to keep her tone nice and even because she was stating what she considered to be a self-evident truth. ‘You’re not. Kieron has a good father.’
‘Good?’
‘I know exactly what Billy is, but he loves his son. And I love him.’
The man was pacing back and forth between the sofa and the window, the ash from his cigarette falling to the floor as he waved his hands around. ‘Oh yeah, I get it. All that “Stand By Your Man” bollocks.’
‘As opposed to standing by your child, you mean?’
‘I would have done.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Course I would, if you’d given me the chance.’
‘Rubbish. I knew it the minute I told you I was pregnant, knew you wanted nothing to do with it. The look on your face.’
‘I was surprised, that’s all.’ The man looked hurt at Cat’s suggestion. ‘I mean, we only did it a couple of times.’ He sat down on the arm of the sofa, pretended not to notice as Cat inched away from him. ‘Can’t help it if I’ve got balls loaded with the good stuff, can I?’
‘Why are you here?’ Cat asked.
He pointed towards the paper on the table. ‘Why do you think I’m here? That’s my flesh and blood that’s missing and I only get to find out when I read the fucking paper.’
‘So, all of a sudden, you care. That what you’re telling me?’
‘I’ve always cared.’
‘What’s his favourite food?’ She looked at him and waited. ‘When’s his birthday?’
The man swore and got to his feet again. He leaned down to stub out his cigarette then immediately reached into his pocket for the packet. ‘I was doing you a favour. Keeping well out of the way, you know, to make things easier for you. You seriously trying to tell me that’s not what you wanted?’
Cat knew there was little point in trying to deny it.
‘Yeah, so.’ He pointed. ‘What you wanted. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about him, does it? Doesn’t mean I didn’t wonder how the little bugger was doing every day or that I didn’t worry about him.’ He lit another cigarette then reached down and picked up the newspaper. ‘Turns out I was right to worry.’ He shook his head as he read the story again. ‘I mean, Christ, Cat . . . how could you—’
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