Close to Home

by Peter Robinson

  When she finally did track the paperwork down, having sent DC Collins to Cambridge to make inquiries there, she could have kicked herself. It was deep in the bowels of Divisional Headquarters, not more than thirty feet or so below her office, and the civilian records clerk, Mrs. Metcalfe, proved to be a mine of information and let her sign out a couple of files. Why hadn’t Michelle thought to look there in the first place? Easy. She had only been at Thorpe Wood for a short time, and no one had given her the grand tour; she didn’t know that the basement was the repository for much of the county force’s old paperwork.

  The noise level was high in the open-plan squad room, phones ringing, men laughing at dirty jokes, doors opening and closing, but Michelle was able to shut it all out as she put on her reading glasses and opened the first folder, which contained maps and photos of the Hazels estate, along with a summary of any relevant witness statements that helped pin down Graham’s progress on the morning of August 22, 1965.

  One useful hand-drawn map showed Graham’s paper round in detail, listing all the houses he delivered to and, for good measure, what newspapers they took. The poor lad must have had a hell of a heavy load, as many of the Sunday papers were bulky with magazines and supplements.

  At the eastern end of the estate, Wilmer Road separated the Hazels from an area of older houses, soon to be demolished. It was at the T-junction between Wilmer and Hazel Crescent that Graham had delivered his last newspaper, a News of the World, to Mr. and Mrs. Halloran, who lived in the corner house.

  The next delivery was supposed to be to one of the houses across the road, but the Lintons there said they never received their Observer that day. Nobody else on the other side of Wilmer Road received a newspaper that morning, either.

  The anonymous mapmaker had also calculated that it would have been around 6:30 A.M. when Graham, who started at 6 A.M., got to that part of his round—daylight at that time of year, but still very early in the morning for any sort of traffic, including pedestrian. It was a Sunday, after all, the traditional morning for a lie-in after the excesses of Saturday night, and most of the customers said they were still in bed when their papers arrived.

  Michelle looked at the old black-and-white photos. They depicted a very different scene from the one she had visited yesterday, after she had talked to the Marshalls. In 1965, across Wilmer Road, there had been a grim row of old shops, all boarded up and ready for demolition, but today a modern DIY center stood next to the new estate, which had replaced the old houses. The derelict shops looked like just the sort of place a kid might want to explore. Michelle checked the file to see if they had been searched. Of course they had. Dogs brought in, too. Not a trace.

  Michelle tucked some strands of blond hair, which had been tickling her cheek, behind her ears and chewed at the end of her pen as she read over transcripts of the initial interviews. Nearly everything was typed, of course, except some of the documents that were handwritten, and the results looked strange, with the uneven pressure of the keys and the occasional blob of a deformed e or g. Such distinguishing features used to be very handy for identifying which machine a note had been typed on, Michelle reflected, before the anonymity of laser printers. Some of the papers were carbon copies, faint and often hard to read. Occasionally, illegible amendments had been made in pen or pencil between the lines, the original words scratched out. All in all, not a promising start.

  Detective Superintendent Benjamin Shaw, now one of the senior officers at Thorpe Wood, was named once or twice as a detective constable on the case. Michelle knew that Shaw had started his career in Peterborough and had recently returned from six years with the Lincolnshire Constabulary, but it still surprised her to see his name in connection with something that happened so long ago. Maybe she could have a word with him, see if he had any theories that hadn’t made it into the files.

  It seemed that the first person to miss Graham Marshall was his employer, Donald Bradford, owner of the newsagent’s shop. Bradford lived some distance away from the shop and employed a local woman to open up, not arriving himself until eight o’clock. According to Bradford’s statement, when Graham hadn’t returned by eight-fifteen that Sunday, half an hour late for his second round on a neighboring estate, Bradford drove around the Wilmer Road Estate in search of him. He found nothing. Whatever had happened to Graham, his papers and his canvas bag were missing, too. Michelle was willing to bet that some of those scraps of cloth found with the bones came from Graham’s newspaper sack.

  After that, Donald Bradford called at Graham’s house to see if the lad had become ill and hurried home without stopping to report in. He hadn’t. Graham’s parents, now also worried, searched the estate for their son and found nothing. With news of the Manchester child abductions still fresh in the public eye, both Bradford and the Marshalls were soon concerned enough to call in the police, and a short while after that, the official investigation began. Preliminary inquiries were carried out in the immediate area, and Detective Superintendent Harris was put in charge first thing the following day, when still no trace had been found of Graham, and the cumbersome but efficient mechanics of a police investigation groaned into action.

  Michelle stretched and tried to work out a crick in her neck without success. It was hot in the office and her tights were killing her. DC Collins, just back from Cambridge, took pity on her and said, “I’m just off to the canteen, ma’m. Bring you anything?”

  “I’d love a diet Coke, please,” said Michelle. “And maybe a slice of chocolate gâteau, if they’ve got any left.” She reached for her handbag.

  “It’s all right,” said Collins. “Pay me when I get back.”

  Michelle thanked him, adjusted her tights as discreetly as possible below her desk and turned back to the files. As far as she could gather from a cursory glance, there hadn’t been any leads at all. Police had interviewed everyone on Graham’s round, along with all his friends, family and schoolteachers. None of it led anywhere. Graham was described, among other things, as being bright, cheeky, quiet, polite, rude, sweet-natured, foul-mouthed, talented and secretive. Which pretty much covered every eventuality.

  Nobody on Wilmer Road had seen or heard anything unusual that morning—no screams, shouts or sounds of a struggle—though one person said he had heard a car door bang around half past six. There were no convenient dog walkers, and even the most devout of churchgoers, being for the most part Methodists or Low Anglican, were still in the Land of Nod. All the evidence, especially the missing paper sack, suggested that Graham had most likely got in a car willingly, with someone he knew, someone local. But who? And why?

  DC Collins returned with Michelle’s diet Coke. “No gâteau, I’m afraid,” he said, “so I brought you a Danish instead.”

  “Thanks,” said Michelle, who didn’t like Danish but paid him anyway, nibbled at it awhile, then dropped the rest in her waste bin and went back to her files. The Coke tin was cold and wet, so she pressed it against her flushed cheek and enjoyed the icy sensation, then she did the same with her other cheek and her forehead.

  The police at the time didn’t neglect the possibility that Graham might have run away under his own steam, dumping the sack of papers somewhere and heading for the bright lights of London like so many young lads had in the mid-sixties, but they could find nothing at all to support this theory. His home life seemed happy enough, and none of his friends suggested that he was at all interested in running away from home. The sack was never found, either. Even so, missing persons reports went out all over the country, and there were the usual sightings, none of which amounted to anything.

  The interviews also turned up nothing, and police checks into the records of several estate dwellers drew a blank. Michelle could read a little excitement between the lines when police discovered that one of the deliveries on Graham’s route was the house of a man who had served time for exposing himself in a local park, but subsequent interviews—no doubt involving some very rough business, knowing police methods of the time
and Jet Harris’s reputation as a tough guy—led nowhere, and the man was exonerated.

  Michelle slipped off her reading glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. At first glance, she had to admit that it seemed very much as if Graham Marshall had disappeared into the void. But she knew one thing that the police hadn’t known in 1965. She had seen his bones, and she knew that Graham had been murdered.

  Annie Cabbot drove out to Swainsdale Hall mid-morning to tie up a few loose ends with the Armitages. The sun had come to the Yorkshire Dales at last, and wraiths of mist rose from the roadsides and the fields that stretched up the dale-sides. The grass was bright green after so much rain, and the limestone walls and buildings shone clean gray. The view from the front of Swainsdale Hall was magnificent, and Annie could see plenty of blue sky beyond Fremlington Edge, with only a few light fluffy clouds scudding by on the breeze.

  The Armitages must be relieved, Annie thought as she got out of her car. Of course, they would be happier when Luke arrived back home, but at least they knew he was safe.

  Josie answered the door and seemed surprised to see her. There was no sign of Miata this time, but Annie could hear the dog barking from the back of the house.

  “Sorry I didn’t phone ahead,” Annie said. “Are they in?”

  Josie stood aside and let Annie walk through to the same large living room she had been in yesterday. Only Robin Armitage was there this time, sitting on the sofa flipping through a copy of Vogue. She jumped to her feet when Annie entered and smoothed down her skirt. “It’s you again. What’s happened? Is something wrong?”

  “Calm down, Mrs. Armitage,” said Annie. “Nothing’s happened. I came to see if you’re all right.”

  “All right? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be? Luke’s coming home.”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Please.”

  Annie sat, but Robin Armitage stayed on her feet, pacing. “I’d have thought you’d be relieved,” Annie said.

  “I am,” said Robin. “Of course I am. It’s just that…well, I’ll be a lot more settled when Luke’s back home again. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Have you heard from him again?”

  “No. Only the once.”

  “And he definitely said he’s coming home today?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to talk to him when he gets back, if that’s all right.”

  “Certainly. But why?”

  “We like to follow up on these matters. Just routine.”

  Robin stood up and folded her arms, making it clear that she wanted Annie to leave. “I’ll let you know the minute he’s back.”

  Annie remained seated. “Mrs. Armitage, you told me yesterday that Luke said he needed some space. Do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes. You told me he’s a normal teenager, and there’s nothing wrong in the family, so why would he run off like that, worry the two of you half to death?”

  “I hardly think that’s relevant now, do you, Detective Inspector Cabbot?” Annie turned to see Martin Armitage standing in the doorway, briefcase in hand. “Why are you here? What is it?” Despite his commanding presence, he seemed edgy to Annie, like his wife, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he stood there, as if he had to go to the toilet.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just a friendly visit.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for your efforts and your concern. We really do appreciate it, but I can see no point in your coming and badgering us with more questions now that Luke’s safe and sound, can you?”

  Interesting choice of words, badgering, Annie thought. Most families wouldn’t see it that way, not with their son missing.

  He glanced at his watch. “Anyway, I’m afraid I have to hurry off to a business meeting. It’s been nice to see you again, Inspector, and thank you again.”

  “Yes, thank you,” echoed Robin.

  Dismissed. Annie knew when she was beaten. “I was just leaving,” she said. “I only wanted to make sure everything was okay. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”

  “Well, as you can see,” said Martin, “everything’s fine. Luke will be back home this evening, and it will be as if none of this ever happened.”

  Annie smiled. “Well, don’t be too hard on him.”

  Martin managed a tight smile, which didn’t reach his eyes. “I was young once myself. I know what it’s like.”

  “Oh, just one more thing.” Annie paused in the doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “You said Luke rang you last night.”

  “Yes. And immediately afterward my wife rang you.”

  Annie glanced at Robin, then back at Martin. “Yes, I appreciate that,” she said. “But I’m wondering why Luke’s call wasn’t intercepted. After all, the technician had set everything up, and we picked up your wife’s call to me.”

  “That’s easy,” said Martin. “He called me on my mobile.”

  “Did he usually do that?”

  “We were supposed to be going out for dinner,” Martin explained. “As it was, we ended up canceling, but Luke wasn’t to know that.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Annie. “Problem solved. Good-bye, then.”

  They both bade her a perfunctory good-bye and she left. At the end of the drive, she turned right, toward Relton, and parked in lay-by just around the corner from the Armitages’ drive, where she took out her mobile and discovered that there was, indeed, a signal in the area. So Martin Armitage hadn’t been lying about that. What was it, then, that had given her the unmistakable feeling that something was wrong?

  Annie sat for a moment in her car trying to figure out the meaning of the tension she had sensed in the room, not just between her and Robin, but between Robin and Martin. Something was going on; Annie only wished she knew what. Neither Robin nor Martin had behaved like a couple who had just heard that the son whose life they feared for was now safe and would soon be home.

  When Martin Armitage’s Beemer shot out of the driveway spraying gravel a minute or two later, Annie had an idea. It was rare that she got to think or act spontaneously, as so much police work was governed by procedure, rules and regulations, but Annie was feeling reckless this morning, and the situation called for some initiative on her part.

  As far as she knew, Martin Armitage had no idea what make or color car she drove, so he would hardly be suspicious that a purple Astra was following him at a respectable distance.

  As Banks drove down the A1 and entered the landscape of bright new shopping centers, electronics warehouses and housing estates that had replaced the old coal mines, pit-wheels and slag heaps of West Yorkshire, he thought about the way the country had changed since Graham’s disappearance.

  1965. Winston Churchill’s funeral. The Wilson Era. The end of capital punishment. The Kray trial. Carnaby Street. The Moors Murders. The first U.S. space walk. Help! Mods and Rockers. It was a time of possibility, of hope for the future, the fulcrum of the sixties. Only weeks after Graham disappeared, the sexy, leather-clad Emma Peel debuted in The Avengers, Jeremy Sandford’s documentary-style TV play about a homeless mother and her children, Cathy Come Home, caused a major stir, and The Who were singing about “My Generation.” Soon, young people were taking to the streets to protest against war, famine and anything else they could think of, shouting “Make love, not war,” smoking dope and dropping acid. Everything seemed on the verge of blossoming into some new sort of order, and Graham, who had seemed so forward-looking, so cool in so many ways, should have been there to see it, but he wasn’t.

  And what came between then and Blair’s Britain? Mostly Margaret Thatcher, who dismantled the country’s manufacturing base, emasculated the trade unions, and demoralized the workingman, leaving the north, especially, a ghost land of empty factories, thrift shops and decaying council estates, where those growing up had no hope of a job. In their idleness and hopelessness, many turned to crime and vandalism; car theft became commonplace; and the police became the enemy of the people. Today, without doub
t, it was a softer, easier, more middle-of-the-road Britain, and a much more American one, with McDonald’s, Pizza Huts and shopping malls springing up all over the place. Most people seemed to have what they wanted, but what they wanted was mostly of a material nature—a new car, a DVD player, a pair of Nike trainers—and people were being mugged, even murdered, for their mobile phones.

  But were things so very different back in the mid-sixties? Banks asked himself. Wasn’t consumerism just as rife back then? That Monday evening in August 1965, when the knock came at their door, the Banks family was settling down to watch Coronation Street on their brand-new television set, bought on hire purchase just the previous week. Banks’s father was in work then, at the sheet-metal factory, and if anyone had predicted that he would be made redundant seventeen years later, he’d have laughed in their face.

  Coronation Street was one of those rituals every Monday and Wednesday when, tea over, dishes washed and put away, homework and odd jobs done, the family sat down to watch television together. So it was an unexpected disruption when someone knocked at the door. No one ever did that. As far as the Bankses were concerned, everyone on the street—everyone they knew, at any rate—watched Coronation Street and would no more think of interrupting that than…well, Ida Banks was lost for words. Arthur Banks answered the door, prepared to send the commercial traveler and his suitcase of goods packing.

  The one thing that entered nobody’s mind when he did this, because it was such a disturbance of the normal routine, was that Joey, Banks’s pet budgie, was out of his cage, having his evening constitutional, and when Arthur Banks opened the front door to admit the two detectives, he left the living room door open, too. Joey seized the moment and flew away. No doubt he thought he was flying to the freedom of the open sky, but Banks knew, even at his young age, that such a pretty colored thing wouldn’t survive a day among the winged predators out there. When they realized what had happened, everyone dashed out in the garden looking to see where he had gone, but there wasn’t a trace. Joey had vanished, never to return.