“Jim,” Sam sighed. “We know about others. It’s them we ain’t got.”
“I milked him, Sam. Three names I got, two buyers and one mebbe.”
“Buyers?” Sam Tietze talked cagey, looking like lock and load, not really believing a word. “You got names of kid buyers?”
Jim said, “I should be so lucky. People he says adoptions gone wrong, past felonies stopping foster-parenting, Christ knows what.”
“How’d he know them?”
“Didn’t say. Been knifed once, didn’t want no more.”
Sam chuckled. “Not all bad news, right?”
“I’m going to call them. Want to come?”
“Jim, we done that shit. How long you got before your bus pass?”
Jim thumped his feet down and waved to the counter girl. They changed every week, Aquilina the Maltese paying them half the legal hourly.
“I’ll give it a miss, Jim. No hard feelings?”
“Just don’t call me as alibi for that night school you pretending.”
Sam beckoned more coffee and shook his head, like hadn’t an officer anything better to do with his time.
The house was as elegant as anything the burbs had to offer. Jim Stazio left his marked police car in the long drive, visible from the road as intimidation, what will the neighbours think? He regained his breath before ringing the doorbell. His water supplement wasn’t taking effect yet, dieting four days and still thirty pounds overweight.
A small neat woman in her fifties admitted him. Her husband was somewhere in transit, Hawaii to San Fran, home tomorrow. He said he was making enquiries.
“A few crosses on paper,” he told Mrs Baines. “Nothing important.”
Sam Tietze had a smoother line, which was why Jim had wanted him along. Sam had a habit of smiling at windows, sofas and maybe carpets like he knew them, hey, I got one in my apartment, that way. Homely, Jim would say if asked, Sam could look homely, things reassured a woman. Sam was a natural, Jim wasn’t.
“It’s about that adoption business again,” Jim said. “That old thing. I’m retiring soon. Loose ends, Mrs Baines.”
Her hand went to her throat. “Loose ends?”
“Nothing serious.” She seemed a mite paler. “Can you just go over how you went about it again? Then I can tick the box and that’ll be it.”
Haltingly, she said how she and her husband had tried for adoption. “All kinds of agencies, Officer Stazio,” she said earnestly. “You’ve simply no idea.” She coloured. “There’s a cut-off. My husband calls it stalling speed. A single day over age, you’ve no hope of adopting.”
They eventually heard of a lawyer in another state, an expert in adoption. There were medical centres specialising in orphans who, once they’d recovered from accident or mental trauma, were adoptable.
You had to go through registered doctors licensed to practice.
“All above board, Officer. My husband doesn’t do dishonest.”
“You met the lawyer?”
“No. We had a name. I gave it to your people.”
He already knew it but pressed her. It checked. “Did you take it further, Mrs Baines?”
“No. My husband worried they might be false. We tried other agencies. We got their names from state attorney people, but gave up. You can’t keep on for ever.”
He said there was nothing wrong with giving up, and left. Blank. The walk to the car was downhill. He felt better.
That afternoon he slogged through lists of medical centres, clinics, medical A and E units with different radii from where the kid had gone missing. Trouble was, the Charleston kid was one of many.
Long shot. Sam was right.
Still, ignore the enormous stack of pending reports and he’d nothing urgent on, so he compiled a grid map for kid abductions. Like, he thought dejectedly, nobody thought of that before. He marked them with colours to indicate time lapses.
He had a few days left.
Chapter Thirteen
Bray asked Mr Winsarls for permission to go over some past Gilson Mather sales records. The owner’s jocularity covered his awkwardness.
“Mr Charleston, do exactly what you want in Gilson Mather! You’ve had your own keys for ten years.”
“Thank you, Mr Winsarls.”
He began only when Tracy and Karen had left. The last of the craftsmen called so-long, Harry Diggins shouting up that he was locking up, Mr Charleston. The place quietened. Bray started excavating sales ledgers. Three centuries of craftsmanship, after all, documents crammed in higgledy-piggledy, none computerised except for the last three years, and those uncertain. He finally found it, realised with a shock how fast time was passing. He’d guessed that a Thomas Sheraton was sold four years previously. It was nearer six.
Meticulously he copied down details. After Mr Winsarls called his goodnights, Bray picked up the phone. Mr Leonard Ireland answered fourth ring and immediately started an apology for not having read some tract but promised he’d do it soon, soon.
“No, Mr Ireland,” Bray put in when he could. “I’m from Gilson Mather, furniture makers.” Into the pause, a little desperate, he said, “I made your table. Turned stump feet, as Mr Sheraton’s.”
The long pause gave Bray a gripe. Was this a terrible mistake?
Then, “You made my table?”
“Yes.” Bray felt his palms go clammy. “I’m sorry to trouble you at home, Mr Ireland.” This was the hard bit. Go round the houses, a retired publisher like Ireland would probably hang up, think he was a nutter.
“I’m calling to ask advice. You,” he rushed on, “being a publisher.”
Ireland barked a gravelly laugh. “Don’t tell me, Mr Charleston. You’ve written a Jane Eyre lookalike and it’s brilliant?”
Bray was taken aback.
“No, Mr Ireland. I wouldn’t presume. You are the only person I’ve ever…” But Bray hadn’t ever known the man. The furniture order had come through some Charing Cross publishing house. Special delivery, and that was that. He ended lamely, “I can pay an interview fee.”
“A fee? Highly original, Mr Charleston! Tell you what. Eightish, I go for a pint. You’re in Spitalfields?”
They arranged to meet.
The White Hart in Drury Lane was crowded. Bray was greeted by the whiskered portly man standing among the mob by the saloon bar door.
“This is the pub where Ben Jonson and his mates met up when Shakespeare died,” Mr Ireland said without preamble. “They sat over there. One actor said that Shakespeare never crossed out a single line. And Ben Jonson cracked: I wish he’d crossed out a thousand!” Ireland laughed. “Rivals, see?”
“Squire Aubrey,” Bray guessed. The retired publisher somehow got Bray a pint of cider. It would have taken Bray all evening to get served.
“They know me, Mr Charleston.” Len Ireland lit a cigarette and smiled. “I still have the furniture you made. Sheraton. My retirement prezzie. I’d longed for a table like that for years. Reproduction; well, you made it, so you know! Other firms said it was too difficult to make by hand, but Gilson Mather said easy-peasy because they had a genius joiner of the old school.”
Bray was embarrassed. “Mr Sheraton didn’t actually do much himself. Left it to his workmen.”
“It’s still dazzling. Conical tables in fashion now, are they?”
“No. Yours is the only one I’ve ever done, except some restoration work for the Hesketh family in the north.”
“You have the gift.” Ireland eyed Bray through his spectacles. “What’s this about? Checking I’m dusting it properly?”
They had to raise their voices to be heard. Bray had worked out a story on the bus. “What is a bestseller?”
“That serious? Your hour begins now, then.” The old publisher had a double whisky, kept giving nods of recognition to bar regulars. “Know that actor, Michael Caine? Zulu, Alfie? He wrote a book. Claimed he could have made it an instant bestseller by buying a few thousand copies. Time it right, his volume would soar.”
“Is it true?”
“That sales shoot you up the charts? Sure. It’s fiddled all the time. Not by mates buying in selected West End bookshops. Adverts can do it, or talk-show hostesses giving you a plug. Or by sleeping around. A publishing joke, Mr Charleston, is Lie down, you’ll soon be on your feet!” The publisher laughed.
“Who decides?”
“Trade groups listed in the reference library. I only know one writer who doesn’t lose sleep the night before the Bookseller is published.”
“What are they for?” Bray asked.
“The charts?” Ireland chuckled. “You’re innocent, Mr Charleston! For track records to prove how good publishers are! Art craves attention, do anything to get mentioned by some DJ. They don’t see the horrible truth.”
“Which is?”
“They’re wrong. Publicists, film stars, everybody assumes that attention is fame. Wrong! Fame is Keats, Byron, Gainsborough. Attention is a column-inch of innuendo between haemorrhoid cream adverts.”
“Can it be faked?”
Ireland weighed his visitor.
“Define your question, Mr Charleston. Do you want to fake book sales? Simple! Invent a publishing category. Like, claim your book on Ancient Babylonian farming achieved most sales in its class! You can even invent your own literary prize! Bribery’s good; I bribed judges for twenty years.”
“How many?”
“Copies? As few as one thousand in a specialist category. Fifty thousand for some popular novel.”
It was difficult to ask, in view of what he’d learned. “What if you don’t want publicity, Mr Ireland?”
A small crowd pushed in, Ireland greeting them with the skilled repartee of the bar fly. He returned to Bray, his expression quizzical.
“You’re an odd bugger – sorry. More difficult. It’d need complete deception.” Bray nodded. This was more like it. “Is there a real book, or not?” Ireland kept his voice down.
“No. And maybe never.”
“Yet it’s got to top sales charts?”
“At least become a household name, in the United States.”
Ireland whistled his admiration.
“Well, Mr Charleston, I’m not saying it’s never been done. Remember the forger Thomas Walker? He nearly brought down the government, claimed Prime Minister MacDonald was a Soviet spy, 1934 I think it was. The Welsh revivalist movement came about by faked publications. Chatterton is famous, of course – it took a genius like Dr Johnson to spot him. I’m not advising you, but you need a text to base a falsehood on. Like the Hitler Diaries. Remember them?” He eyed Bray. “Goes to prove that you can exalt any trash.”
“Thank you, Mr Ireland.”
“Is that it? Look,” the publisher said, for the first time showing hesitancy. “Don’t let me pry, but give me a ring if you get stuck, eh?”
“I don’t want to bother you unduly.”
“Then bother me duly, Mr Charleston.” Smiling, Len Ireland reached to shake hands. “Will I see you on TV late-nighters?”
“I hope to go unnoticed.”
“Really?” Ireland was intrigued. “How soon?”
“That’s the next thing I need to find out.”
Bray felt the publisher’s gaze all the way to the pub door. He didn’t care. He was getting there, getting there.
That same night, he noticed the manuscript woman, even though it was a much later train. They almost exchanged a greeting. That was once, now no longer. Not now. Bray turned away. Talk had to be useful, which meant for only one purpose. At Kelvedon he saw her eyes on the book he was reading, Publishing for Beginners. He simply read on, and she returned to her endless typescript.
Chapter Fourteen
Bray had built the shed twenty years before.
When Davey had come along it became a resort and Bray installed a dust extractor. Davey’s job was to switch it on. Davey had a toy toolkit of his own, graduating to a genuine miniature pin hammer, screwdriver and rulers. One of Bray’s proudest moments was hearing Davey repeat, “Block plane,” seeing the lad hand it up. Such brilliance!
The guiding incident was just before Davey’s bedtime one evening.
Reminiscence was all very well, unless it served a cunning purpose. It could easily become a placebo of the kind grievance-hunters wanted. Bray once heard an elderly woman tell how her family – her accent was Middle European – had been dispossessed of art treasures by “enemy forces” during World War Two. She had given up her campaign to recover the wealth by letters to the United Nations. Her account shocked Bray.
What was the balance between repossession, and the temptation to hark back? Had she got it right, and he, Bray determined to hunt alone for his stolen grandson, utterly wrong?
A lone hunt could be the road to lunacy.
“Think, Bray,” he said aloud in the shed. They had been his own father’s constant words.
“Against the hunt,” he said aloud to Buster, sprawling by the shed door where he could keep an eye on Bray. “America is huge; just look at the map, Buzz.”
The United States of America was vast. He’d never been there. Time was against him. The longer Davey was gone, the more he would blend in. Bray had never seen a theme park, didn’t even know what one was. His image was Blackpool funfairs and plastic cartoon monsters gambolling among fairy castles. And he didn’t know where Davey was.
Ignore that strange certitude in the candle hours when he lay awake and suddenly felt that Davey was still out there.
Had he enough money for a private eye? And how to choose a good one? What if he paid someone who simply pretended and did nothing?
Another factor: fifty-three was ageing. He knew nothing. Were kidnapped children spirited abroad, or kept brainwashed in that country?
He didn’t know.
There seemed to be as many police forces and security systems as there were policemen. A book from the local library, Policing in USA, he finished none the wiser.
A couple in the next avenue had lost a baby soon after its birth from illness. They blamed themselves. For a year they had gone to mediums, done table rapping, visited spiritualists. Neighbours funded trips to famed psychics. Nothing came of it. Maybe it was the same as Shirley was currently experiencing, unorthodox psychotherapy of folk origin? Bray didn’t know.
“We’ve factors against us, Buster,” he told the retriever. It gazed back.
For once, he lit his storm lantern. It was a small oil thing and had been Davey’s passion. (Correction: is Davey’s passion.) Angry, Bray reminded himself of those tenses. Present tense. He would find Davey. He would take those evil opponents on and win.
“What’s in my favour, Buzz?”
List them: Sound of mind, not barmy. And fifty-three wasn’t bad. Not as fit as he ought to be, so he must exercise from now on. Stay fit and healthy.
Other plus factors?
He was solvent. Emma had married her builder bloke, fine. Bray had investments. Geoff and Shirley needed no financial help now. Bray had made out a will in his family’s favour. When his bank account grew and incurred the bank’s attention, Bray simply told them to buy him some shares. The certificates went into a drawer. Dividends went into the bank account. That was it.
A couple of times he bought unit trusts, their names forgotten. He didn’t have a motor. He’d bought Geoff a saloon car when Davey was born, to enable Shirley to get about. He was surprised he’d afforded it so easily. He didn’t go out much, preferring to read and watch telly and take care of fair-haired Davey. In sum: Healthy, solvent, mentally fairly capable.
Skill? Joiner. This made him wince. It wasn’t much, though something flickered in his mind for an instant. Hope maybe? Except maybe also meant maybe not. He thought, let it mean whatever it bloody well wanted, for KV was there behind the shed’s end panel.
Bray opened the wooden leaves and stared in the lantern light at the images before him.
The words were Davey’s invention. He laughed at many new words as they registered. Purple wa
s the colour of his KV landscape. Purple was Davey’s first hue. The land was peopled with armies that did nothing.
Maybe they were derived from games all children played. Who knew what they talked about in playgrounds?
He and Davey had painted the landscape on the shed’s end wall, using cheap acrylics from the corner shop. Soon after, Davey began calling the land KV.
The name was an enigma. Bray searched for it, even tackling the British Library at Kings Cross. The two words really did come from Davey.
“Hats!” Davey exclaimed, four years of age.
The people of KV thereafter wore hats, all various shapes. Some were spherical, some tall and rectangular, others conical and extravagantly brimmed. Shapes defined status. Of course Davey’s was the most important, for he too lived in the mythical land.
Bray carved Davey’s own figure out of American maple for his fifth birthday, a four-inch shape with a tall rectangular hat surmounting an enormous brim. Davey’s hat alone was purple. On the rectangle was Davey’s unique inverted pyramid, ball, crown. Bray had laughed at his grandson’s seriousness as the carving took shape. There was an immensely complex hierarchy of folk in Davey’s imaginary land. Bray never quite got the hang of them. When Bray carved the miniatures Davey always watched each statue take shape, swinging his legs as his grandfather worked life into the wood.
“Too fat, Grampa,” he’d say, or simply a condemnatory, “Wrong!”
Bray would comply. Rejects were stored in a box on a shelf. And Bray would start again, asking Davey what, how, about a figurine.
Davey knew with amazing consistency.
Bray started keeping notes of each character and pencilling in the carving techniques Davey liked. He had a hard-backed book for the data, kept on an under-shelf because Geoff objected. Davey was spending too much time whittling wood, and not enough thinking of school.
“What the hell’s it for, Dad?” Geoff asked. “Davey’s got schoolwork.”
Finding Davey Page 7