by Stuart Young
Picking up her scissors Janie pointed them at him. ‘You are not calling the police.’ She strode out of the room.
Will sat, chin resting on his fist. ‘He definitely looked like a weirdo.’
Sully was sick.
Josh looked up from the cage where the little mouse lived. ‘Can you help him, Daddy?’
‘We’ll see how it goes. If he’s still sick tomorrow I’ll take him to the vet.’
Josh looked like he was about to burst into tears. He loved that little bundle of white fur, even naming him after a character from his favourite movie, Monsters, Inc. Will could still remember the first time Josh ever played with the mouse, delighting in its squeaks. ‘He’s talking to me! He’s talking to me!’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Michael had taken the traditional big brother role of spoiling his younger sibling’s fun. ‘Mice can’t talk.’
Now Josh looked down at where Sully lay twitching gently in his cage. Josh’s lip trembled.
Will gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.’
Will hurried back from the pet shop. Although he hoped Sully would pull through he wanted to have a replacement lined up just in case. That way if Sully did go to that big treadmill in the sky he could have Sully 2 in the cage before Josh realised the truth. Poor kid had been through enough what with losing his big brother without losing his pet too.
Satisfied that the pet shop had a mousy doppelganger on standby Will threaded his way through the pedestrians that crowded the street. Witches and pumpkins grinned from shop windows as people rushed about making last minute purchases of Halloween costumes and sweets. Evening was drawing in, the night taking its first tentative steps before claiming the town.
A couple of blocks over and he was away from the “pedestrians only” area in the town centre and crossing the street became infinitely more dangerous. Drivers ignored pedestrians stepping off the pavement and the pedestrians ignored the signals at the Pelican crossings. Will guessed he had a 50/50 chance of making it across the street without being run over.
Maybe the odds were slightly worse than that. Motorists got lazy when they thought they didn’t need to keep an eye out for pedestrians and there were way more cars than people using the street. Just the odd straggler here and there, scurrying about like fleas feasting on the town’s cold grey hide.
Ahead of him Will spotted someone who looked like the man who had waved to him whilst he had put the rubbish out the previous evening. Still dressed all in black. Tall bloke, skinny, probably in his late twenties. Good-looking in a twitchy kind of way, his attractiveness ruined by hair that had already begun to thin, the wispy shoulder length strands sticking out from his skull in tangled knots as though he had a cat o’nine tails glued to his head.
A child sauntered alongside him, holding his hand. A little girl, still young enough to skip along the street rather than walk. His daughter? Niece?
Will’s eyes narrowed. The man he had seen last night didn’t look the type to have a kid. Maybe it wasn’t the same person after all. Before he could get a better look the man and the girl turned off down a side alley.
Will’s face twitched. So the man had taken the girl down an alley. It didn’t mean anything. Maybe he knew a shortcut. Or maybe their tower block had a side entrance. Nothing to worry about.
He quickened his pace.
Okay, just a quick glance down the alley, make sure the girl was all right. Then keep on walking as though nothing had happened. Because nothing had happened, this was all perfectly innocent, perfectly harmless.
Then he heard the same screeching otherworldly flute music that played just before Michael vanished.
He exploded forward, sprinting for the mouth of the alley.
It was a dead end. No sign of the man.
More importantly there was no sign of the girl.
* * *
The spinning lights on the police cars flung electric blue lightning out into the night, causing shadows to dance across walls and along pavements. But only the shadows danced and cavorted, the figures that cast them had more serious business.
Will stood apart from the detectives and uniformed officers who prowled the crime scene. They already had his statement, he was of no more interest to them.
He wasn’t even sure how far they believed his story. There were no doorways leading off from the alley and the brick wall that blocked the end was too high for anyone to climb unless they had brought along mountaineering gear. Even without the little girl in tow there was no way the man in black could have scaled the wall.
Yet somehow he had done it. Had vanished.
Will leaned against a wall, gingerly bending and then straightening his leg. The sprint for the alley had aggravated the old football injury that had ended his apprenticeship as a professional footballer before it even began.
Amongst the crowd of onlookers he caught a glimpse of Janie’s white coat. Beside her was Josh, clad in his Action Man costume, his water pistol clutched in his hand. Spotting Will Janie marched over to him, Josh in tow. ‘I can’t believe you called the police!’
Will began to regret calling her on his mobile. ‘I didn’t call them. The girl’s mother did. I just happened to still be here when the police showed up.’
He hadn’t had much choice in the matter. Seconds after the girl vanished her mother came running down the street, calling for her daughter, nearly in hysterics. Will told her what he’d seen and she snatched his mobile phone, used it to call the police. Then she crumpled, all the strength going out of her. Will spent the next few minutes until the police arrived hugging her, comforting her, telling her everything would be all right.
Lying to her.
He looked at Janie. ‘What are you doing here anyway? I told you I’d be home soon.’
‘I wanted to make sure you didn’t start making any crazy accusations.’
‘Great.’ He lowered his voice to an angry whisper. ‘So you bring our son along to the site of a childnapping? Do you want him to go into therapy?’
Josh looked up. ‘Childnapping?’
Janie rolled her eyes. ‘Nice going. I didn’t tell him about the childnapping. He didn’t know a thing.’
‘Neither did you. This girl was snatched by the same person who took Michael. If the police catch him he can tell us where Michael is.’
Janie stared at him. For a moment her face blazed with fierce hope but then she remembered she didn’t believe Will’s wild fantasies. Her face turned hard, a stone with human features. Then she yanked on Josh’s hand, thrusting him towards Will. ‘Here. You’re so worried about your son you take care of him.’
Josh yelped in pain. ‘Mummy!’
Janie thrust her face up to Will’s. ‘You already lost one son, let’s see if you can lose this one.’
She turned and stormed off, her white coat becoming lost amongst the crowd, fading from sight like melting snow.
Josh looked at Will, his face filled with hurt and confusion. ‘Mum’s angry.’
‘You think?’ Wincing, Will took out his bottle of aspirin and struggled with the lid. Josh took it from him, opened it, handed it back.
‘How come Mum always liked Michael more than me?’
‘She doesn’t.’
‘Yes she does.’
‘No, it just seems that way because she’s upset that Michael’s gone.’
‘Is he ever coming back?’
Will hesitated, unsure if he wanted to admit the truth. ‘I don’t know.’
Looking at the police cars Will decided he wanted to be far away from here. Somewhere safe. ‘Anyway, we’d better head home.’
‘Oh, Dad. I wanna go trick or treating … ’
‘You come home now and I’ll buy you twice as many sweets as you would have got trick or treating.’
Josh’s whining stopped as if someone had hit an off switch. ‘Okay.’
Will started to lead Josh away from the crime scene. As he did so he passed a couple of detectives, both in th
eir fifties, one with his head shaved to disguise his baldness as a fashion statement, the other with short greying hair and glasses with lenses so thick he could probably see the surface of Jupiter. As Will drew closer he heard the bald detective apologising. ‘You know I’d get out of this if I could, Cooper.’
‘No worries. Your town’s as bad as mine. If you’ve got to work you’ve got to work. I’ll catch up with you another time.’
The greyhaired detective, Cooper, turned to leave and Will caught a glimpse of a wedding ring on the wrong finger and small, delicate hands that shivered against the cold. Cooper thrust his hands into the pockets of his black knee length coat then halted abruptly, staring at something over Will’s shoulder.
Automatically Will glanced back to see what the detective was looking at. Then he froze too.
The man in black stood on the far side of the crime scene.
A couple of the uniformed officers were doing door to doors with the neighbours, hoping someone had seen something. The man in black stood with the door to his flat ajar, answering their questions.
Will stared at him. He wanted to scream at the police to arrest the man but his throat went dry, clamping down on his words.
Behind him he heard someone who still had control of their voice. ‘Fucking Piper!’
Cooper scowled across the street, his face flushed. The thick lenses of his glasses did nothing to disguise the hatred in his eyes. Beside him the bald detective glanced round to see what was distressing his friend and his face dropped. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’
‘I dunno, Harris. Maybe he’s out enjoying the fresh air or taking in the sights. Why don’t I go ask him?’
Harris laid a hand on Cooper’s arm. ‘You think that’s a good idea after what happened last time? This isn’t your case or your town. Christ, you aren’t even on duty tonight.’
‘You’re going to question him, yeah? Don’t just leave it to the woodentops.’
‘Course I will. Got to ask him if he saw anything, don’t I? But unless something ties him to the crime questioning’s all I can do. It’s all anyone can do.’
‘I know, that’s the fucking problem.’ Cooper sighed. ‘Let me know what he says, all right?’
‘’Course.’
Cooper slouched away from the crime scene, all the fight drained from him.
Harris called after him. ‘I’ll give you a bell about that drink, all right?’
Will watched the exchange, intrigued. Now he looked back at the man in black. The man stared back at him. Shit, the man would recognise him, would know where he lived. Then the man’s eyes dropped away from Will. The child snatcher’s gaze came to rest upon Josh.
The man smiled.
A panda car pulled up beside the police station. Two constables opened the back door and a heavyset man with coal-black eyes and blood on his hands got out and was escorted to an interview room in sullen silence. Twenty minutes later a scrawny woman, dressed in a short skirt and not much else, screeched her innocence; the money was a loan for fuck’s sake and the bloke they had found her screwing was her boyfriend even if she couldn’t quite remember his name right now.
Will shuddered, uncomfortable in the squalid surroundings. This wasn’t how he wanted to spend his lunch break.
He didn’t understand why he was being kept waiting. Forty minutes had passed since he had spoken to the WPC at the reception desk. That had been intimidating in itself, first being buzzed through one locked door, walking down a short corridor, then buzzed through another door only to find himself still separated from the WPC by a wall of plasti-glass that covered the reception desk like a transparent fortress. When the police were that paranoid in their own station it didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Eventually a door opened and Cooper came in dressed in a sombre grey suit and an incongruously loud red tie. He looked tired and harassed as his gaze settled upon Will. ‘Detective Sergeant Cooper. You wanted to see me?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m afraid I can only spare a few minutes. Right now I’m more snowed under than Captain Scott.’
‘Oh.’ Will wondered how the hell he was supposed to fit everything he needed to say into a few minutes. ‘It’s about Piper.’
Cooper’s posture straightened, his weariness evaporating, his eyes focusing behind the thick glasses. Opening a door he ushered Will through.
‘Maybe I can give you more than a few minutes.’
Traffic roared and growled. Drivers roared and growled too. Even the trees by the side of the road looked angry, the gnarled bark on their thick trunks resembling war wounds, their barren branches twisting out across the road, trying to grab and tear at their rival trees on the opposite pavement.
Standing high above all this on the roof of the police station Cooper offered Will a cigarette.
Will hesitated. Smoking a cigarette on a rooftop brought on a horrible sense of déjà vu.
Then the old cravings kicked in and he took the cigarette anyway. Cooper lit it for him and then lit one for himself. Will took a long, exquisite drag, drawing the smoke deep down inside him. Beside him Cooper sucked greedily on his own cigarette, eager to smoke as many as he could before returning to a non-smoking environment.
‘So,’ said Cooper. ‘The lads over at Harris’s station didn’t take your identification of Piper seriously because you’ve got a history of crying wolf. Throw in a bunch of witnesses giving him a cast-iron alibi and he’s let off scot free.’
Will flicked ash from his cigarette. ‘I know what I saw.’
‘I believe you. His alibi means sweet FA. You can find a way to get people to say anything you want you look hard enough. And Piper’s one slippery bastard. I ought to know.’
And then Cooper told him about Piper.
Two years ago there had been a spate of child kidnappings in Cooper’s town. When Cooper investigated his chief suspect was Matthew Ferguson. Or Piper as Cooper came to call him. Cooper hounded Piper but with no hard evidence to back up his case he never got the charges to stick.
‘Bastard got me up on charges though. Said I was harassing him. I tell you, if I’d been harassing him he’d be in the bloody hospital.’
Will eyed Cooper. He didn’t look like a hard nut, more like a school teacher or an accountant. But as Cooper lit another cigarette Will noticed his hands again, the wedding ring on the wrong finger. Scar tissue snaked across Cooper’s knuckles while his ring finger and little finger stuck out at awkward angles, twisted and mangled the way digits can get when a punch doesn’t land squarely.
Cooper noticed Will looking and he gave a wry smile. ‘I used to have a bit of a temper. But you can’t go around thumping suspects these days. No, if you want someone putting away you have to be sneaky; outthink the fucker.’
‘Does your wife mind you wearing your ring on the wrong finger?’
‘Nah, she’s all right. Better than not wearing it at all. If you can’t do something right you do it the best you can, that’s my motto. Pretty much sums up how marriage works anyway, don’t it?’
Will nodded. Suddenly he felt a great melancholy descend upon him.
Cooper lit another cigarette. ‘I can’t go after Piper. I even breathe on him too hard the force will hand him a big cash settlement and he’ll start up again somewhere else same as last time.’
‘What about your friend Harris? Can’t he do anything?’
‘Yeah, Harris is a great bloke. Funny, clever, great to have a drink with. But he’s got balls the size of peanuts. He won’t go after Piper if he thinks it’ll hurt his pension.’
‘Isn’t there anyone at your station who might look into it?’
Cooper sneered. ‘My boss probably hasn’t even finished processing the paperwork from the first time I pegged Piper as a suspect. Only way he’d nail Piper is if he spotted him snatching a kid while wearing a T-shirt saying “I’m A Twisted Pervert Who Abducts Kids For Fun.” And even then he might not figure it out.’
They stood
in gloomy silence. Will came to the end of his cigarette. Regretfully he stubbed it out.
‘Why do you call him Piper?’
Cooper looked at him through heavy eyelids and a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘You know why.’
‘That bloody flute music.’
Cooper dropped his cigarette, ground it beneath his shoe, sparked up another one. ‘Turns out Piper’s brother was snatched, back when Piper was a nipper. Family were on a picnic, the kids had run off ahead playing. Some perv snatches the brother. Piper sees the whole thing. Probably would’ve taken him too but the parents catch up, the perv legs it. The parents didn’t even see him. Just found Piper lying on the ground bawling his eyes out. Even after he quietened down they didn’t get much sense out of him, he was too young. But he did say that just before the kidnapper nabbed his brother he heard music. Flute music.’
Will stared at him. ‘He’s copying the MO of the man who kidnapped his brother.’
‘You and me, that’s the conclusion we’d come to. But these newfangled coppers with their fancy college degrees they think the original kidnapper is still on the loose.’
‘They’re wrong.’ Will spoke with iron certainty, convinced of the truth. Then he realised that was exactly how he sounded when he spoke to Janie and the police and every other person who had ever proven him wrong in his suspicions. Reluctantly he relented. ‘Although … I suppose it’s plausible.’
‘Plausible my arse! Bloke would have to be pushing sixty by now. No way he could have cleared the wall at the end of the alley. Blimey, even Spider-Man couldn’t clear that wall.’
Cooper flicked his cigarette away.
‘But you want to know the real clincher? How I know that Piper’s a piccolo short of a woodwind section? When his parents found him he wasn’t crying ’cos his brother was taken; he told his parents he cried ’cos he’d been left behind. Even after they explained that the kidnapper was a real bad man he still wanted to go. He wanted to be taken.’
Cooper reached for another cigarette but the pack was empty. Scrunching up the pack he dropped it to the floor. ‘What do you do about a sick bastard like that, eh?’