The Stone Gallows (34 page)

How hard, I wondered. Hard enough to drive him into the arms of the sister?

Joe stood up, picked up the cordless phone from my desk. With infinite gentleness, he said, ‘Ian, I think you need to contact the police.'

Sloan nodded and reached out for it. Just as his fingertips made contact, my mobile phone rang. His hand jerked in shock. The two of them watched me check the caller I.D.

Audrey. I sighed as I flipped the phone open. As usual, she sounded pissed off about something. ‘Where's Mark?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Don't fuck me around. Where is he?'

‘Audrey, I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘He was supposed to be waiting for me to collect him after school.

He's not there. I've driven all over the fucking place. I spoke to some old git who says he saw a boy like Mark getting into a blue car. Your shit-heap Golf is blue. Where is he?'

A cold thread of fear twisted inside my belly. ‘Audrey, I don't have him. I swear.'

Either she didn't listen, or she didn't hear. ‘I can't believe you would stoop so low. I mean, I know I'm not going to win mother of the year, but I would never have done something like this to you.'

‘Audrey. . .'

‘If you don't put him on the phone this minute, I'm going to call the police. You'll be charged with child abduction or child endanger-ment or whatever the fuck it is and I'll make sure that you never see him again as long as you live.'

‘Audrey, are you saying that somebody saw him getting in a car?

With a stranger?'

‘Somebody saw him getting in
your
car, you bastard.'

‘Audrey, I don't have him. Phone the police. Do it now, and then stay at home. I'm coming over.' I handed the phone back to Joe. ‘I have to go. Mark's gone missing.'

I left quickly, but not so quickly that I missed the look that passed between Joe and Ian Sloan.

11.7.

Constable Malcolm Jenkins looked at the man and thought,
pretentious old bastard.

The old bastard in question was about seventy, wearing a white silk
shirt underneath a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows. And
a cravat, by God! In twenty-seven years on the force, Jenkins had never
actually seen a cravat, had believed them to be a fictional item of apparel
created by eighteenth century romantic novelists to make their limpid
heroes a tad more dashing. It was a jaunty number, tartan, scarlet and 
emerald green, tied in a foppish little knot around the old git's scrawny
chicken neck.

He checked his notebook. ‘So, Mr. . . Carruthers. . .'

‘Please, just call me Anderson.' The man's voice was clipped and
precise. He had claimed to be a retired English teacher. Jenkins, who in
his youth had hated the English, teachers, and English teachers, had
absolutely no doubt it was true.

Anderson fucking Carruthers, he thought. Jesus wept. ‘So what time
was it you saw the lad in question?'

‘Let me see. . . I took Monty for a walk when Countdown finished. I
guess it would have been about twenty past four.'

‘You're sure about that?'

Carruthers bridled. ‘Quite sure, Constable.'

It was just after seven pm. The two of them were sitting on red leather
armchairs in Carruthers' living room, which was overflowing with
ornamental plates and pewter pots and a whole load of other tat
specifically designed to appeal to pretentious old bastards between the
ages of sixty and eighty. It was like leafing through the back pages of
the People's Friend, thought Jenkins. The walls were covered in Official
Princess Diana Commemorative tea towels and cross-stitches of West
Highland Terriers poking furry snouts out from straw baskets.

He passed over the photograph that he had been given by his Sergeant
less than forty minutes ago. ‘And you're sure it was this lad?'

‘I'm fairly certain. I always take Monty into the park, so I was about
a hundred and fifty yards away.'

Monty was a real West Highland Terrier, lying on the rug like a hairy
rat. Instead of a collar, it was wearing a tartan neckerchief that bore a
suspicious resemblance to its owner's cravat. Every time Jenkins shifted
his weight, it bared its teeth at him. He fought the urge to step on it.

‘That's quite a distance, Mr Carruthers.'

‘What are you implying?'

Jenkins sighed silently. Why did he always have to get the irritable
coffin dodgers? ‘I'm not implying anything, sir. A hundred and fifty yards
is quite a distance. I'm not sure I could recognise somebody from there.'

‘I'm certain it was the boy.'

‘What was he wearing at the time?'

Carruthers looked at Jenkins as if the younger man was an idiot.

‘School uniform, of course. Grey trousers. One of those hooded tops.'

‘You mean a hoodie?'

‘It was a hooded top, officer. I deplore the habit of deliberately
shortening words for no apparent reason. I'm quite sure you wouldn't
appreciate your name being abbreviated to Malkie.'

And I'm quite sure you wouldn't appreciate your name being
abbreviated to Cunt, thought Jenkins. He wondered if he should point
out that Monty was obviously a shortened version of Montgomery before
deciding that like almost all teachers – retired or not – Carruthers would
remain completely oblivious to his own hypocrisy. ‘What colour was the
hoo. . . the hooded top?'

‘Black.'

According to the missing boy's mother, he had been wearing a black
hoodie. That conveniently narrowed it down to about eighty percent of
the population under the age of twenty-five.

‘Mr Carruthers, I need you to tell me exactly what happened.'

‘Like I said, I was out walking Monty. I saw the boy talking to somebody in a car. They talked for maybe five minutes, then the boy got in the
car and they drove away.'

‘Where was this?'

‘On the corner between Hawthorne Avenue and Skella Road.'

‘Did you see the person driving the car?'

‘I did not.'

‘Not at all?'

‘Not at all.'

‘What kind of car was it?'

‘It was blue.'

Jenkins took a deep breath. ‘What kind of car was it?'

‘I don't know. It looked foreign. Not British.'

Jenkins thought about asking the man to clarify Britishness, decided
he was happier not knowing. ‘But you couldn't tell me the make?'

‘No.'

‘Was it big or little?'

‘Medium.'

‘Was it a hatchback? A coupe? A saloon?'

‘What's a coupe?'

‘It's. . .' He had no idea. ‘Just describe the shape of it, if you can.'

‘It looked fast. Expensive. It wasn't the kind of car a poor man could
afford, if you know what I mean.'

Jenkins sighed. For somebody who obviously prided himself on his
ability to dot i's and cross t's, Carruthers had the observational skills of
Stevie Wonder on Valium. ‘Sir, is there anything of value you could tell
me about the car?'

‘It had one of those silly little roofs on it.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The kind that slides up and down.'

‘I see.' Jenkins scratched a note on his pad. ‘What happened then?'

‘They drove away.'

‘And nothing struck you as being unusual?'

‘No. I didn't think anything of it.'

‘And it was only when Mark's mother stopped you in the street fifteen
minutes later did you think there might be a problem?'

The old man nodded. ‘Is that the boy's name?'

‘Yes. Mark Stone.'

‘I'm surprised he isn't called something like Phoenix, or Diesel, or
Agamemnon. People today give their children such stupid names. It
shouldn't be allowed.'

‘I quite agree, Anderson,' Jenkins replied. ‘Where were you when she
stopped you?'

‘Just outside the house. She hit the brakes so hard she nearly clipped
the curb. Started yammering on, had I seen her little boy?'

‘And you told her what you had seen?'

‘Of course. She got very upset.' Carruthers' tone was vaguely
surprised. ‘Seemed to be quite angry with me for some reason.'

‘I'm sure she was just worried about her child.'

‘That's no reason to be rude. She was quite the cheeky little madam.

No wedding ring on her finger, either.'

Jenkins let it go. ‘The blue car. Had you ever seen it before today?

Maybe cruising round the neighbourhood like it was looking for
something?'

Or someone?

The old man thought about it. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not the kind
of person that catalogues every vehicle that goes past, Constable.'

Of course you're not, Jenkins thought. Probably too busy watching
Countdown and complaining to Monty about the number of
immigrants. He stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your time, Mr Carruthers.'

‘Has the boy been abducted, do you think?'

‘It's too early to be sure. Give us a call if you remember anything else.'

‘I will.' Carruthers showed the police officer to the door. ‘I'm sure he'll
turn up. Give him a clip round the ear and a telling off and he'll learn
not to do it again. We're too protective of our children these days. We
wrap them in cotton wool and think that we can protect them from the
world. We didn't do that in my day. Promote independence, that's the key
to bringing up children.'

‘Do you have any kids, Mr Carruthers?'

‘I never married.'

‘I see.' Jenkins put his cap on, wondering who the hell had done all the
cross-stitches that hung in the living room. ‘I'll certainly pass on your
parenting tips to the boy's mother.'

He was sure they would provide a great deal of comfort if he'd been
raped and murdered by a paedophile.

11.8.

I was going to kill him.

Arnold the Surgeon sat next to the woman I once thought I was going to marry, the fingers of his left hand entwined with hers in a manner that conveyed possession rather than support. He wore canvas trousers, sandals, and a blue short-sleeved shirt. Designer glasses dangled from the breast pocket by a wiry, almost-invisible leg. I could feel him examining my cheap denims and even cheaper T-shirt (Motto: Fat Men Do It By The Pound), but every time we made eye contact he would flick his gaze into the corner of the room. The prick.

I was going to kill him because he was making a noise.

For the past ten minutes he had relentlessly clicked the top of a retractable ball-point pen. In, out, in, out. Every few seconds he would walk the pen around his knuckles so that it ended up back at the start, his thumb falling on the popper ready for another round.

Click-click. Click-click. Twirl. Click. Twirl-twirl-click-cli. . .

‘Arnold?'

‘What?'

Even his voice was annoying; rich in timbre with a lilting Inverness accent, it sounded like he was having his scrotum caressed by a latex-gloved scrub-nurse who did porno on the side.

I nodded at the pen. ‘Do you mind?'

‘Mind what?'

‘The clicking. It's irritating.'

He blinked at me in surprise. ‘The clicking?'

No
way
was this guy bright enough to be a surgeon. ‘Yes. The clicking.'

He did it once more before putting the pen back on the coffee table. ‘I'm sorry. It's just a habit I have.'

I smiled my thanks. Audrey glared at me. I smiled at her as well, and she looked away.

Completing our happy little gang of four was a police officer from the Family Liaison Unit, one of the most miserable, thankless specialities in the force. Janice Galloway was about forty, short for a copper, with dark hair scraped back from her face in a bun. Apart from a nose that looked to have been broken on a number of occasions, she was attractive enough. On the third finger of her left hand was a band of white skin where a wedding ring might have sat, and I found myself wondering if she was another casualty of failed relationships. Probably, I concluded. Why else would fate have set her sail on our particular ship of fools?

It was eight pm. Mark had been missing for more than four hours.

His mother hadn't spoken to me for the last ninety minutes. It was about the only silver lining in one extremely large cloud.

The first two hours had been a blur. I'd checked every street, shopping arcade and public library within a two mile radius of Mark's school, even bribing a grumbling janitor thirty quid to look in every single class-room of Mark's primary school.

All to no avail.

Upon running out of ideas, I'd drifted over to Audrey's place, finding Arnold's four-by-four parked in the driveway and a police car in the street outside. The three of them brought me up to date, not that there was a lot to catch up on. Audrey had been twenty minutes late collecting Mark from school, he hadn't been there, she'd looked for him, finding instead an old man who claimed to have seen him getting into a blue car. Police had interviewed the gentleman in question and seemed to think his claims had some credibility.

The driver of the blue car was described as “unknown”, a phrase guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of every parent in the world.