Missing, Presumed (17 page)

‘Then what?’ asks Manon.

‘Then he said he had to go out. Said he be back later. Before he left, he say to me, “Everything about to get a whole lot better, bro.” And that was it, that was the last time …’ The tears fall sudden and fat. This is the first time he’s talked about it, she thinks. He looks up at her, his huge eyes liquid with loss. ‘He din come back. He never came back. I woke up an’ looked beside me.’

She pictures the sleeping bags, one of them empty when Fly woke up on Monday twelfth December. ‘Then what?’

‘I went to school. I kept callin’ him, textin’ him. I thought maybe he was workin’. Straight from school I went to the police.’

‘What did they tell you?’

‘Told me he’d turn up. Told me he not a child, so nuffin’ they could do.’

‘Can you think of any reason Taylor might have gone to East Anglia?’

‘Where dat?’ says Fly, looking at the eggs as the plate lowers to the table in front of him.

‘It’s an area, about two hours from here. Countryside. Very flat. Lots of small rivers.’ She can’t seem to make it sound much better than that. She thinks about mentioning fog, but stops short. There’s a round of applause from the television and the game show host bellows, ‘Obrigado! Obrigado!’

‘I know it don’t look like much,’ he says, setting in on the toast, ‘but this is a good place. The Persian guys are good guys.’ He nods at Momtaz. ‘They gives me free tea sometimes. And the guys in Bestco. Broken biscuits, old cakes, innit. They know about Mum. They help us, ’specially Taylor.’

‘Did he go to school?’

Fly shakes his head. ‘Said someone had to get the money and it wasn’t going to be Mum. He was well strict wi’ me. Said I was the clever one. I was the one readin’ all them books. I wish I didn’t now. I wished I got off my butt and helped him.’

‘Helped him how?’

‘So he could be proper – no sellin’ and dealin’ and what not.’

‘What was the “what not”?’

Fly shrugs. ‘This ’n’ that.’

‘Like what?’

‘He din tell me, he din wan me to know.’

‘Did Taylor ever mention a girl named Edith Hind?’

‘Dat girl on the news? She’s famous. She’s on telly.’ And his eyes light up, as if being dead were as nothing next to the wonder of celebrity.

‘Yes, did he know her?’

‘Nah.’

‘What do you think happened to him, Fly?’

Fly looks at her, and he is all eyes, huge black pupils, wide and vulnerable. He has a way of pushing his lips out when he sniffs that is innocence itself. ‘He say he was sorting money for us. He say what was happening now was just, well, our luck about to change. But he din want me to know his bidniss – kept everyfing away from me.’ His eyes have filled up again, the wetness un-burst this time. He has the terrified look of someone who is falling off the edge of the world. ‘He my brudder.’

‘One last question, Fly. Have you ever heard the name Tony Wright?’

He thinks. Sniffs. Shakes his head. ‘Did he hurt Taylor?’

‘We don’t know. But we’re going to find out, Fly. We’ll find out what happened to Taylor and whoever hurt him will go to prison, I promise you. What’s happening now, with you, I mean? Have the social workers told you anything?’

He shakes his head. ‘I wanna stay at school, at home wi’ Mum. I manage with what the guys at Bestco gimme. I went to a friend’s house at Christmas. I’m all right. I don’t need no care home ’n’ all dat.’

Manon sits back, looking at him. Looking and looking, her mind racing.

‘Wait there,’ she says.

At the till, the café owner is staring up at the Portuguese game show, agog.

‘A word,’ says Manon, showing the woman her badge.

She leads Manon to a corridor stacked with food and they stand with the multi-coloured slats of the doorway curtain about their shoulders like plastic hair.

‘I want you to keep a tab for that boy over there,’ says Manon. ‘Give him whatever he wants to eat, whenever he wants it, and send the bill to me. I can give you card details as surety.’

‘Is OK, your job. You will pay,’ says the woman, smiling. ‘He just a boy. I feed him no problem.’

‘Right,’ Manon says to Fly when she gets back to the table. ‘Come on, we’re going to buy you a coat.’

‘Davy,’ she says. She’s gasping for breath, leaning against a wall, the phone to her ear. She’s looking at the dirty Cricklewood sky, opaque as wool. She cannot seem to get a full lungful. ‘Davy,’ she gasps.

‘Calm down, Sarge. What is it?’

‘We’ve got to help him.’

‘Who? Help who?’

‘Taylor’s brother, Fly. He’s in a shithole and his mum’s out of it, and no one’s feeding him, not now Taylor’s gone. Davy, he’s going to get taken into care. He’s
ten
.’ She feels dizzy with the lack of oxygen. A bus roars past and she cannot breathe because she’s whipped about by a grey fog of exhaust fumes, unnaturally warm. ‘Social workers are onto him. You remember what that woman said from child protection – what was her name?’

‘Sheila Berridge,’ says Davy. ‘Didn’t think you were listening.’

‘Fine, Davy, fine. I’ve changed my tune. What can we do?’

‘Care’s not always bad. Sometimes it’s better than where they are.’

‘D’you believe that?’

‘Course I do. I’m not saying it’s lovely. I’m not saying it’s mum and dad and roast chicken for Sunday lunch. But people get through it. It’s dry, there’s food. He might get a decent foster family.’

‘Or he might get shoved into a massive care home which is stalked by paedos. I just want someone – a teacher, education welfare, anyone – to keep an eye on him, that’s all. Free school meals, I dunno. Taylor fed him and now …’

‘All right, all right,’ says Davy. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll talk to my mentoring buddy. See if she can’t pull a few strings down there. When did you turn so soft?’

‘Iaaaan!’ she shouts up the stairs as she makes for the front door, rubbing her hands and thinking she must put the heating on. Their thermostat timer has not been adjusted to all these bodies being home during the daytime.

Miriam opens the front door and there is DS Bradshaw, a rumpled mass of black clothing, a capacious bag dropping off one shoulder. Her curls are pushed back from her forehead. She half-smiles a hello.

‘Do come in,’ says Miriam, stepping back. ‘Gosh, it’s freezing. Come on in, yes, that’s it, follow the corridor straight down to the kitchen.’

DS Bradshaw walks ahead of her, Miriam following and saying, ‘Tea?’

‘Lovely, yes, thanks,’ says the officer, allowing her bag to slip to the floor beside the kitchen table. ‘Glad to see the photographers have gone.’

‘Yes, we are no longer of interest, thank God,’ says Miriam, filling the kettle at the tap. ‘For the time being, at least. The last of them sloped off on New Year’s Eve but it was only the stragglers, to be honest.’

DS Bradshaw takes off her coat, laying it gently over the back of the padded banquette and revealing only more black, formless clothing. Perhaps they have to be constantly prepared for death –
harbingers at the ready!

Ian walks in. ‘DS Bradshaw,’ he says, offering his hand. His voice these days has no uplift, no spring of humour behind it, which Miriam had always so loved in his greetings.

‘Call me Manon, please.’

‘Yes, Manon, of course.’

‘Tea, darling?’ says Miriam.

‘Why not?’

‘Can you call Rollo down?’

‘Yes, of course,’ says Ian. ‘He’s frantically tweeting and Facebook-ing,’ he says by way of explanation, and he disappears again to look for their son.

Miriam places a tea in front of Manon, who looks up at her and her face is lit by the window opposite – an angry left eye, swollen, pink-sheened and half shut.

‘You’d better treat that, sooner rather than later, by the looks of it. Conjunctivitis,’ Miriam says, adopting her GP no-arguing voice. ‘Very simple – buy some Chloramphenicol eye drops over the counter. It’ll clear up in a day. But make sure you finish the course. There, sermon over.’

‘I thought it might clear up by itself.’

‘Unlikely.’

‘How are you bearing up, Lady Hind?’

‘My name’s Miriam, my dear,’ she says. ‘And I’m not bearing up at all. Do you have any news for us?’

‘Not about Edith’s whereabouts. We have some leads …’

‘Leads?’ says Ian, settling, with Rollo, in the chairs opposite Miriam and Manon.

Manon stretches out her hand. ‘Nice to see you again, Rollo. I hear you’re running a formidable social media campaign.’

‘Much good it’s doing. There’s a lot of online emoting,’ says Rollo, ‘often by strangers, which I know I should find comforting but is really quite creepy.’

They smile and sip. In the sad silence of the kitchen, a fly fizzes against the glass of the window.
Tap, fizz, tap.

‘So – leads, you said,’ says Ian.

‘Well, not exactly leads,’ says the sergeant. ‘Possible links which need exploring. We found a body.’ Then she swiftly adds, ‘No, not Edith. A boy – a seventeen-year-old called Taylor Dent.’

‘Oh, his poor mother,’ says Miriam, her palm across her mouth.
Poor mother, but oh thank God it’s not Edith, thank God that wretched mother is not me.
‘What has he to do with Edith?’

‘We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re investigating. He is, was, from Cricklewood, not far from here.’

‘I think you’ll find Cricklewood is very far from here,’ mutters Ian.

‘Did Edith ever mention the name?’ asks Manon.

‘Taylor Dent?’ says Ian and he searches Miriam’s face. They shake their heads at one another.

‘I’ve never heard of him,’ says Miriam. ‘How did he die?’

‘We can’t be sure. His body was found on Friday in the river near Ely. Did you know him, Rollo?’

‘No, no, I’ve never heard of him,’ Rollo says.

‘Did Edith ever try any drugs? Did she buy any marijuana from anyone, for example?’

‘No,’ say Rollo and Miriam simultaneously.

‘She had a boyfriend who smoked a bit – Jonti – but she never wanted it,’ says Rollo. ‘I know because I was with her when he was smoking.’

‘Might she have refused because you were there?’

‘I don’t think so. It wasn’t a big deal – she had no moral problem with it, she just didn’t like it, or feel the need for it,’ Rollo says.

‘We’ll need to talk to Jonti,’ says Manon.

‘I went to see him this morning. He hasn’t seen or heard from her. But yes, of course, I’ll get you the number,’ says Miriam, getting up to fetch her telephone book from the worktop.

The fly is fizzing its death throes again.

Ian gets up and turns to the window, his back to them. He begins to rattle – rather frantically, Miriam feels – at the window lock, trying to lift the metal arm to let the fly out.

She returns to the table, her reading glasses on, and gives Manon the number. Then she looks up irritably. ‘
Ian
, stop fussing and come and sit down. This is important.’

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Is this Dent boy your lead? Do you think he harmed Edith?’

‘We’re trying to work out whether there’s a connection between the two of them first – whether they had ever met, or whether they had friends in common.’

‘He was seventeen, you say?’ says Rollo.

‘A
child
,’ says Miriam.

‘Which school was he at?’ asks Rollo.

‘He’d left school. He worked the black market, basically,’ says Manon. ‘Cigarettes, counterfeit gear, stolen goods, other things, too.’

‘I hardly think Edith would know someone like—’

‘Oh, Ian,
shut up
,’ Miriam snaps, and she is immediately ashamed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says to Manon. ‘I shouldn’t snap.’

‘It’s all right,’ says Manon with a weak smile.

Oh, stop fucking observing us, Miriam thinks. We are like that fly, helplessly bashing ourselves against glass.

‘We have the feeling,’ says Ian, ‘that there is information you are keeping back about the investigation.’

Miriam looks into Manon’s face. She can see a decision being made.

‘There was another lead, which was a focus of our investigation for a time, but it has proved … well, it hasn’t gone anywhere.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ says Ian, and Miriam smiles at him gratefully. At least he still has some fight in him.

‘Go on,’ pleads Miriam.

‘We have been looking at someone called Tony Wright. He was released from Whitemoor prison eight months ago, where he’d been serving a sentence for aggravated burglary and sexual assault.’

‘
Sexual assault
,’ says Miriam. ‘I was praying it wouldn’t be—’

‘It isn’t,’ blurts Manon. ‘He has a cast-iron alibi for the weekend Edith disappeared.’

She has closed the door on Detective Sergeant Bradshaw and the things she shared with them about Tony Wright, the way he held a knife to the throat of his terrified victim.

Miriam and Ian stand in the cold, quiet well inside their front door. He looks at her, then frowns and turns, and in this split second she thinks she can see contempt. For what? For her upset?

He is marching down towards his study and she follows him.

‘What was all that rattling about with the window? Can’t you sit still for a minute?’ she says, spoiling for him to swivel on his heels and give as good as she wants to give him.

‘Leave me alone,’ he says icily. He stands behind his desk, pretending to leaf through some papers.

She walks out of the study and he shouts after her, ‘Where are you going – for another lie-down?’ and she turns and storms back in, and when she gets there, his face is a jagged mess of fury and accusation. ‘Why is your distress the only thing in the room?’ he demands.

‘It isn’t, Ian, but you won’t allow me any grief at all. She’s my daughter.’

‘And she’s mine, and you sobbing or lying in a darkened room the whole time doesn’t help.’

‘What do you want me to
do
?’

He is silent, his head bowed again towards his desk, but she knows he is fizzing and enraged just like her.

‘Stop acting like this is my fucking fault,’ she says and walks out again.