Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

After enquiries drew a blank, the case was referred to the National Missing Persons Helpline, who distributed posters and checked their usual sources, but found no official records of Carl. So they appealed for news of him on their weekly page in the Big Issue magazine. Nearly twenty people called after seeing Carl’s photo, to say: ‘That’s the chap I buy the magazine from!’

The NMPH faxed a letter for him to the Big Issue, and Carl called. He knew the photo was of himself, but didn’t recognize the name: he had invented one for himself. All he could remember, he said, was being chased through the streets of Newcastle and then getting a lift from a truck driver. When they stopped for coffee, the driver said: ‘You’d better wash your face.’ In the mirror, Carl saw blood from a head injury he hadn’t been aware of .

The driver dropped him off in Manchester, where Carl wandered the streets for three weeks, still not knowing who he was. His sole possessions were a St Christopher medal and a keyring holding a snap of himself with a woman. Eventually he sought help from the Citizens Advice Bureau, who told him of a hostel in Stockport and gave him the bus fare. He lived there for a year, started selling the Big Issue under his alias, found a flat, began to build a life for himself — but was haunted by the fear that something terrible had happened in Newcastle. What had he done?

The NMPH reassured him that he wasn’t in trouble with the police. His brother said it sounded like Carl, and that he had had an accidental blow to the head three days before he vanished. The NMPH arranged a meeting. Carl recognized his brother, and it turned into a happy and emotional reunion. Finally, Carl went home to see his mother again .

‘You see?’ said Sarah Renshaw. ‘That could be Emma.’

Diane Fry handed back the paper. Her eyes had automatically been drawn to the next case study below it, which was headed ‘We find long-lost sister’. She didn’t want to read that one. She suspected how easy it would be for her, too, to become convinced that her case would be the next success story for the National Missing Persons Helpline.

‘We’re in touch with all the agencies,’ said Sarah. ‘They send us news regularly. We have Child Find and Missing Kids in the USA. The NMPH, of course. UK Missing Persons. People Searchers. We’ve listed Emma with them all, and we check regularly. If she turns up somewhere, they’ll let us know.’

‘You shouldn’t put too much faith in the system, Mrs Renshaw.’

‘Oh, but they get results all the time. I’ve looked at their websites on the internet. They have wonderful successes every week for somebody. They find missing persons who have been suffering from amnesia and don’t know who they are, or people who have gone off for some reason and then haven’t been able to get up the courage to contact their families. Every week, they find people like that. One week, it could be Emma that they find.’

‘But there’s no way you can keep up with every single missing or homeless girl in the world, is there?’

‘We have to try.’

Then Fry took out the photograph of Emma taken in Italy.

‘Who’s the other girl in this photograph?’ she asked.

‘One of the students on the same course,’ said Sarah. ‘I forget her name.’

Fry turned the photo over. ‘Emma and Khadi, Milan’ was scrawled on the back, with the date.

‘Her name seems to be Khadi. Do you know anything about her?’

‘No. I think she’s a local girl — from Birmingham, I mean.’

‘Did Emma know her well?’

‘I don’t think so. She isn’t one of the friends she socializes with. I think that’s a problem when students are local — they don’t live in the halls of residence, or in student accommodation, so they don’t mix in as much socially.’

‘Also, it probably means they’re still living at home with their parents,’ said Fry. ‘That can hinder their social lives a bit, in some cases.’

‘Yes, especially—’ Sarah Renshaw stopped.

‘Especially what?’

‘Well, she’s an Asian girl, isn’t she? I understand some Asian families don’t give their daughters quite as much freedom as we do. It’s different for sons, of course.’

‘Is that right?’

Fry had dealt with many Asian families during her time in the West Midlands. She had encountered young women with Asian backgrounds who had every bit as much freedom as Emma Renshaw had been given. Probably more, in fact. But it was true that if the girl called Khadi had lived with her parents, that could have been the reason she hadn’t socialized with Emma and her friends, whatever her background.

‘We never spoke to her, did we?’ said Howard. ‘I don’t think she can be a particular friend of Emma’s.’

‘I’m sure the local police would have spoken to her anyway, if she was,’ said Fry.

‘Well, I’m not sure of that at all.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Khadi. It sounded like a shortened form of some other name. Fry racked her brain, trying to cast her mind back to Birmingham and the Black Country. She seemed to have lost most of her cultural awareness in just a few months spent in the Peak District. There were a few Asians in Edendale, but most of them were Chinese and ran restaurants and take-aways. Sometimes, there were parties of Japanese tourists. But seeing a person from the Indian subcontinent, or an Afro-Caribbean, was still quite a rarity.

Khadija. Was that it? She made a note to get someone to contact the art school in Birmingham and track down a student with that name. The school would grumble, no doubt, but it was worth following up. It felt like a loose end.

‘I take it you’ve heard about what happened to Neil Granger?’ she said.

‘Yes, we heard yesterday.’

‘Yesterday? The day he was found?’

‘Gail Dearden told us. She’s a friend of ours.’

‘The Deardens live up the road a little way out of Withens,’ said Sarah. ‘They bought the former gamekeeper’s lodge.’

‘Is that Alex Dearden’s mother?’

‘That’s right. She said her husband Michael saw the body, and he thought he recognized Neil Granger.’

Fry frowned. She remembered that Dearden’s car had been intercepted by officers at the scene where Granger was found. She hadn’t visited the air shaft herself, but she was surprised that Dearden could have been allowed close enough to identify the body.

‘What was Mr Dearden doing there?’ she said.

‘We’ve no idea.’

‘Alex doesn’t live with his parents now, does he? He has a house in Edendale.’

‘He never really went back home after he graduated,’ said Sarah. ‘He got a job with a computer company in Edendale, and he moved to live there. I don’t think Michael and Gail see as much of him as they’d like. But he has a girlfriend, and it seems serious, so he has other things to think about than his mum and dad.’

‘Unfortunately, I never did get the chance to speak to Neil Granger about Emma.’

‘That’s a shame. Do you think he might have known where she is? We’ve never asked him, not since we went down to Bearwood two years ago.’

‘You’ve asked Alex Dearden often, he says.’

‘Yes, but that’s different. The Granger boys weren’t people we talked to very much.’

Fry sighed. It didn’t make sense to her. It seemed the fact that Sarah Renshaw had pestered Alex Dearden for news of Emma, but not Neil Granger, didn’t actually mean she thought Alex was more likely to know something.

‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over that last day again with you,’ she said.

‘Last day?’

‘The day Emma went missing.’

‘Ah.’