by Neil White
Even Sam was smiling now. Jon had that knack. ‘So I’m being patriotic?’
Jon shrugged. ‘You’re in it for the money, for the glory. For this,’ and he waved his hand around, ‘sitting in a pavement bar that can’t decide if it’s in Paris or Blackley, paying more for your beer because the girl who brings it to your table has got bouncy little tits and an arse you want to grab the next time she goes past.’
‘You must have had a conscience once?’ asked Alison.
Jon smiled at that. ‘I watched them all walk free. Rapists, child-killers, robbers. All set free by some clever defence work, and the lawyers were the ones going home in the Mercs. Maybe I just thought it was my turn.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Just take the cheque, Sam.’
Bobby held my hand as I waited outside the police station for Laura.
It felt strange—his fingers were tiny in my palm—but nice, secure.
It had been an interesting afternoon. I had finished it off in Blackley library, trying to find out what I could about Luke King. It was a gamble, because if he was charged with murder then the story would die until the court case had finished, and by the time I could use it most of the hacks in London would have paid for the research, cued up old school friends to say how they always thought that things weren’t quite right with him.
I needed Luke to be dropped out of it, and then find out why he was ever linked to it. There might be a bad rich-kid story in there.
Nothing came from a Google search, but the library had been quiet, just a few pensioners browsing the alcoves, and so I had a free run at the microfiche scans of the local paper. They were stored in boxes for each year, with a daily copy fitting onto one piece of film and sorted into individual months. I was able to go back eighteen months before I ran out of time, but there was nothing really to get excited about.
As I went through, the abduction stories became a constant headline. I became distracted, and printed off some of those stories to see if I had missed an angle.
I had seen the same image each time. A distraught mother, her features embattled, almost broken down by life, often alone. I wondered if the lack of interest for the first missing child was because of how they looked, in tracksuits and in poverty. No one asked the question about why the children had been out so late, but it was implicit in the tone of the pieces.
But when I got to the reunion pictures, the families looked different. The smiles were broad, the relief obvious, but there was something else. It looked like thanks for a second chance, and the hugs from their missing offspring looked special, as if they were the first they’d had for a long time.
I felt Bobby pull on my hand. As I looked up, I saw Laura. I felt my breath catch. Her dark hair bounced lightly as she walked, and I could see her dimples flash at me as she got nearer. I let go of Bobby and he ran towards her, and, as she picked him up to swing him round, I saw many emotions flicker across her eyes. Relief, happiness, sadness, guilt.
When she reached me she leaned across to peck me on the cheek, but she couldn’t get close enough for Bobby leaping around. I made do with a smile.
‘How was your day?’
Her smile faded. ‘Varied, and not ended.’
‘Made any progress?’
She shook her head and looked straight ahead. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said, but she didn’t look at me when she said it. ‘Fancy pizza, Bobby?’
I looked down as Bobby grabbed my hand again, and he started to swing between us, his legs kicking up high, squealing and giggling. It seemed like pizza was fine, and I sensed Laura’s mood brighten again.
We headed towards an old cobbled square, near to the legal quarter. As we got closer I saw Sam Nixon at a small steel table with Alison, the young lawyer from court earlier, and an older man in a suit and bright tie. It was packed at the end of the working day, somewhere for young suits to buy wine and talk loudly, laugh even louder, and watch the married ones shuffle towards their cars. It was different to the pub across the road, where skinny men in football shirts and grubby jeans drank out the day.
As we got closer, Sam Nixon looked up, and he appeared surprised. But I realised that he was looking at Laura.
‘Good evening, Detective. End of a long day,’ said Sam.
Laura slowed up and smiled.
‘Hello, Mr Nixon.’
‘Sam.’
‘Okay, Sam,’ she said, and smiled. ‘How’s young Mr King? Do you think he’ll sleep easy?’
‘I’m sure he will.’
Laura was about to walk on when Sam stopped her, his hand resting lightly on her forearm. ‘Have you heard of Eric Randle?’ he asked.
I thought that Sam’s eyes looked worried. I glanced at Laura, but her gaze betrayed little.
‘Why do you ask?’ said Laura.
Sam shrugged. ‘I can’t say. Client confidentiality.’
I saw Laura’s eyes flicker at that. She paused for a moment, and then said, ‘Eric Randle discovered the body. He’s the one who called it in.’
I looked down, tried not to take part in the conversation, but my mind couldn’t help but process the details.
Sam began to shake his head, smiling to himself. ‘At least that clears up one mystery,’ he said. ‘Thank you, detective,’ and he raised his bottle in a salute.
I felt Bobby tug at me as Laura set off again.
‘I’ll catch you up,’ I said.
Laura looked uncertain for a moment, and then she turned away with Bobby.
‘How’s your day been?’ I asked Sam.
He looked up at me. ‘Not a bad set-up there,’ he said. ‘She does the groundwork, you get the story.’
I started to say it wasn’t like that, but then I realised that it was just like that.
‘What about Eric Randle?’ I asked, curious.
Sam looked at me for a moment, and then he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.
‘He paints his dreams,’ he said, throwing it onto the table. ‘Just for a moment, I thought he was genuine.’ He sighed and drained his beer. ‘I’m going home.’
I picked up the piece of paper and looked at it. I took in the images, the flashes of colour, and then my eye was caught by the television, a flat screen mounted high behind the bar.
I pointed. ‘Could I have your autograph on this before you leave?’
He followed my gaze. The TV showed an interview, two men standing in front of a statue. It was the one near the court. The interview was the pavement scene I had witnessed earlier, with Sam and Luke King. I looked down at the painting again. One of the images on it was like the picture now on the television screen. Eric Randle’s painting had turned into real life.
I watched as Sam became transfixed by the television, and then I patted my pocket as I turned to walk away, where I had just put the painting handed to me by Sam.
Chapter Eighteen
Sam’s house was in semi-darkness when he got home. He’d stayed out later than he intended.
It was a detached house, with a gravel drive and a neat lawn at the front. Bay windows jutted out from either side of a porch, and a double garage stopped anyone seeing round to the rear, to the long stretch of lawn and neat shrubs. It was a suburban dream, a long way from the place he had grown up in, a run-down council house with mould on the ceilings.
As he went in he could hear the television blaring, and as he looked down the hall he could see the flickering blues, the rest of the room in darkness.
He tried not to make too much noise. When he went into the living room he saw Helena asleep in the chair. There was an empty bottle of wine on the table next to her, near to a glass with a thin layer of red in the bottom. He hoped the bottle was her first, but these days he couldn’t be sure.
He knelt down next to her. She was breathing softly, and her cheeks had a soft flush, the effects of wine and struggling all day with the children. He looked to the ceiling, towards his two boys in the rooms upstairs. They’d be asleep, another day when they hadn’t seen him.
&n
bsp; He moved some strands of hair that had been lying over Helena’s face. Her skin felt soft and warm, and he gently ran his finger along her cheek. Being asleep took ten years off her, nearer to when they’d first met at university.
Being Harry’s daughter had got Helena a rich accent and a private education, her teenage years spent at boarding school. She had liked Sam’s rough edges, so different to the boys she had known when she was growing up. And Helena was a world away from the girls Sam had grown up with—bitter beyond their years, their youth and vitality obscured by teen pregnancy and hopelessness.
Harry hadn’t been happy to see Sam arrive on the scene. He saw Sam for what he was: a rough kid aiming too high. As far as he was concerned, Helena was way too high for Sam. Maybe Harry saw in Sam too much of himself.
But Sam and Helena had stayed together, maybe because of Harry’s protest, not in spite of it. They got their law degrees and went to the College of Law together. When they both emerged, Harry gave them both jobs, perhaps scared that Sam would get a job away from Lancashire and take Helena with him.
It backfired on him. Sam and Helena moved in together, and then Helena became pregnant just when she was starting to build her career. Zach came first, the wedding much later, followed by Henry. After that, Helena gave up the law, time with her boys more important than anything her job could give her.
Sam leaned forward and kissed his wife on her forehead. He remembered their first kiss, her lips soft like rose petals, warm breath on an April midnight, tentative, careful. He remembered how she had looked the first time he saw her naked, on a sweltering summer night just before their exams, her skin soft, warm, her murmurs of pleasure like lullabies.
These days it seemed like they had forgotten how to know each other, kept together only by children and habit. They didn’t speak much, just household conversations, and their infrequent lovemaking had become functional, empty.
Helena murmured and shuffled in the chair. He thought he saw her smile. He reached underneath her and picked her up, and as he stood she burrowed her head into his neck. She was light, had hung on to her slim frame, even after two children and a diet wrecked by booze. As he lifted her, he saw the second empty bottle tucked into the sofa. He sighed.
He took her upstairs and put her on the bed. As he looked down he was gripped by sadness. The girl he had fallen in love with had been happy, always smiling. Why had their life together turned out so different to how he had imagined it would?
He covered her over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I miss you,’ he whispered.
He looked in on the boys. As always, they looked serene, their sheets pulled tight under their chins, their breaths soft and deep. He felt the ache he always felt when he hadn’t seen them that day. But they had to live and suburban dreams cost money. A lot of money.
He thought back to Jon and what he had said earlier. Was it all just about the money? Had that been Sam’s reason for going into law? He’d chosen criminal law because he could relate to the people, or so he told himself. His own upbringing hadn’t been much different from his clients’, on a concrete estate, brought up by his mother after his father chose booze over her. Sam had got lucky. His mother had been desperate for him to get away, to make a better life for himself than she had, and so had held down two jobs to keep him in education. But had he really chosen criminal law because he felt a bond? To his clients he was just another suit. Or was it because he was too different from those in the glamorous jobs, in corporate or banking law? Maybe he had never really escaped the estate.
He went back to the bedroom and lay down behind Helena, so that his arm rested on her. He closed his eyes. Perhaps tonight he’d actually sleep.
He was jolted awake by the ring of his mobile phone. He looked at the clock. Thirty minutes had gone by. He put his head back and thought about not answering, but as he let it ring Helena started to move.
He reached into his pocket and recognised the number. Blackley custody. Why hadn’t they called the firm’s out-of-hours number? Let a runner get out of bed.
He stepped out of the bedroom and answered the phone. Terry McKay had been arrested. And he was insistent that he had to see Sam.
Sam exhaled. He remembered how Terry had been earlier, drunk, aggressive. Sam thought about not going, Terry didn’t deserve his time, and he was tired. But he knew he had no choice. His job had been his choice, and for as long as Terry McKay drank, there was money in him.
Sam closed the door and headed out.
Laura shushed me quiet as I passed her a glass of red wine. She had kicked off her shoes and was relaxing on the sofa. Bobby nestled in her arms, just drifting off to sleep.
I kissed her on the cheek, and I could smell Bobby, took in a deep breath of washed hair, that infant smell, the ultimate clean.
I flopped onto a beanbag, the last remnant of my bachelor furniture. It was still chaos inside the house. Boxes lined the walls, the contents still not unpacked, and most of Bobby’s toys were piled in a corner. We hadn’t done the territory thing yet, worked out whose favourite pictures were going on the wall, and which were going to be relegated to my study. I could guess the answer. Laura just hadn’t told me yet.
‘How is he?’ I said, nodding towards Bobby.
Laura stroked his hair.
‘He’s been a good boy.’ We were talking in whispers, letting Bobby fall into a deeper sleep before he was taken upstairs.
I smiled. ‘He’ll be fine. And how was your day?’
She closed her eyes. ‘Too long.’
I took a drink and sat back, but then I remembered something. ‘Geoff called. He wants to know if he can have Bobby this weekend.’
Laura sighed. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, and then hugged Bobby a little tighter. I could see worry in her eyes, that Bobby would become the object of a power struggle.
‘I was near the station today,’ I said casually.
Laura looked at me. She shook her head. ‘Don’t, Jack.’
I shrugged, tried to look innocent. ‘What?’
She raised her glass, now empty, rather than answer. As the wine I poured glugged to the top of the glass, she said, ‘No point in grilling me for news. I’m not going to say anything that isn’t approved. We’ve got an unsolved murder and a team made out of those not good enough for the abduction cases. And we’re no nearer to solving either.’
‘Is that a quote?’
She drew a finger across her neck in a cutting motion. ‘Off the record, journo.’
When I smiled, Laura said tensely, ‘I mean it, Jack. Things are different now.’
‘Why?’
Laura looked around the room. ‘It looks sort of obvious. We live together now.’
‘But it worked before.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Before, well, we were just in contact when we felt like it, and most reporters have police contacts. This is different. They’ll think it’s pillow talk and I’ve worked hard for this.’
I knew she was right, and I knew how much she had fought for her career. Her parents were good people, her father in the City, her mother doing voluntary work, but they thought Laura had been destined for better things. A lawyer. Doctor. But Laura wanted to do a job that excited her, and she had been right. She was a good cop.
‘Okay,’ I said, smiling in defeat. ‘It’ll be okay, you know.’
Laura looked quizzical. ‘This,’ I said, my eyes flitting around the room. ‘Us, in the north. It’ll work out.’ I leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head. ‘Well work out.’
Laura leaned back, closed her eyes. I scooped Bobby into my arms and made my way to the stairs.
He lay down next to the boy, a collection of blankets keeping him warm. He could feel the summer coming to an end. The walls became damp as the temperature dropped, the moisture dirty, making grey streaks around the room and the ceiling drip as the heat from the oil-lamp went upwards.
He shivered. The boy’s breaths were inches from his face, soft flutters
over his cheeks. He reached across and moved the boy’s fringe out of his eyes.
‘Nearly there,’ he whispered, and then wrapped himself up in the blankets. ‘New start in the morning. You’ll see.’
He closed his eyes, felt the excitement in his stomach, sensed his pulse quicken as he thought of it. He almost laughed out loud. He wished he could tell people what he did, could see the gratitude in their eyes as he explained how he changed their lives, reminded them about loving, about caring. The ones affected would know, but he knew that not everyone understood.