Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

‘A young man is dead.’

‘Yes! I knew you could do it. You beauty! What a finish! Here’s Detective Chief Inspector Oliver Kessen to talk about the progress the police are making in the enquiry into the murder of twenty-two-year-old Neil Granger, “A young man is dead,” says Mr Kessen. What a genius!’

‘And we believe we are seeking an individual who is prepared to resort to violence.’

‘Just a minute, that’s seven.’

‘Oh, damn. The daft bastard. Why couldn’t he have stopped when he was winning?’

‘When you were winning, you mean.’

‘Seven. Who had seven?’

‘Nobody.’

‘No one had enough confidence in the lad. Who’d have thought he could manage seven statements of the bleedin’ obvious in one minute?’

‘Has he done much media work before?’ asked Cooper.

‘I dunno, Ben. But he won’t be doing much more, if he performs like that. The one thing HQ like in their senior officers is a good media image.’

‘What about the media liaison officer?’

‘Dan Simmonds?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Murfin sighed. ‘Ah, well. Better get back to work on this murder enquiry, I suppose. I believe we’re seeking an individual who’s prepared to resort to violence, like.’

The rest of the CID team were already starting to drift away home for the night by the time Diane Fry got back to her desk. She barely noticed them leaving as she logged on to the website of the National Missing Persons Helpline and looked through the photos of missing people. Ironically, Emma Renshaw was one of the most recent additions. The other cases made Fry very depressed, but there was no denying that they were compulsive reading.

There was Kevin, who had vanished in 1986, aged sixteen. He had left his home to buy some eggs for a cookery exam at school the next day. Before he went out, he’d had a bath and emptied his pockets, so he took only £1 with him to pay for the eggs, and nothing else. Kevin hadn’t been seen since.

There was Dan, from a village near Southampton. He was only fourteen, but the eldest of five children. He was last seen in January 2002, after spending an evening fishing with some friends. An adult thought he had seen Dan in the village square later that night, but Dan never returned home.

And then there was Carly, twenty-six, who vanished from Sheffield in November 2001. She had just returned from travelling abroad and was busy sorting out her things. When her mother came home, it looked as though Carly had popped out. She had taken her keys with her, but little else. She never came back.

Fry sat back, staring at the windows of the CID room without seeing them. At one time, that gallery of missing children on the NMPH website would have included Angela Fry, aged sixteen, last seen in Warley, West Midlands.

Diane had been fourteen in 1988, when Angie had left the foster home they were living in. It had been the year of the Lockerbie bomb, the year Salman Rushdie went into hiding and George Bush Senior had become president of the USA. But it had also been the year that Angie had left the foster home where they lived, and she was never seen again. Not by her sister, anyway.

Other kids remembered that year for Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure , for Cagney and Lacey, and the Goss brothers with their mascara and lip gloss. Some of Diane’s friends had been such huge Bros fans that they had worn black puffa jackets and ripped jeans, and Doc Martens with Grolsch bottle tops attached to the laces. But Diane had been fourteen then, and her foster parents hadn’t allowed her to wear ripped jeans. She had made do with a Garfield toy with sucker pads on its feet that she had stuck to the window of the car when they had gone anywhere. Garfield had been helping her look for Angie in the Black Country streets they drove through.

But even Garfield had failed her. At nights, she had sat in her room and listened to pop music, wondering where Angie might have gone. Angie had mentioned Acid House raves, taking ecstasy and KLF. But Diane was listening to Belinda Carlisle ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ and Bobby McFerrin — ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’. The world had seemed a grey place. School had lost any interest for a while. West Bromwich Albion had been swilling around in Division Two, changing managers nearly every year. Ron Atkinson was the manager the boys had been talking about.

The small details were impressed on Fry’s mind as if they might have been immensely important for capturing the memory. The last memory that she had of her sister, unusually excited as she pulled on her jeans to go out that night. She was going to a rave somewhere. There was a boy who was picking her up. Diane had wanted to know where, but Angie had laughed and said it was a secret. Raves were always held in secret locations, otherwise the police would be there first and stop them. But they were doing no harm, just having fun. And Angie had gone out one night, with their foster parents making only a token attempt to find out where she was going. Angie had already been big trouble for them by then, and was getting out of control.

Looking back, Fry knew she had worshipped her older sister, which was why she had been unable to believe anything bad of her. Every time they had been moved from one foster home to another, it had been their foster parents’ fault, not Angie’s.

And when Angie had finally disappeared from her life, at the age of sixteen, the young Diane had been left clutching an idealized image of her, like a final, faded photograph.

When he got home to 8 Welbeck Street that evening, Ben Cooper found Mrs Shelley standing in the tiny hallway shared by the two flats. She was clutching something in a paper bag with mauve stripes, and she looked a bit surprised to see him.

‘Oh, it’s you, Ben.’

‘Yes, I still live here, Mrs Shelley. Were you waiting to see me?’

‘No. I’m going upstairs.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘She’s very nice. You’ll like her.’

‘Will I?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Who will I like?’

‘Peggy,’ said Mrs Shelley, raising her voice a bit, as if she thought he might have gone deaf.

‘I don’t know any Peggys. Wait a minute... is this somebody who’s moving into the upstairs flat?’

‘Of course. I told you it was all arranged.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Well, it’s all arranged anyway.’

‘Who is she, Mrs Shelley?’

‘Quite by chance, I have a friend who lives in Chicago. She emigrated to the USA with her family nearly thirty years ago.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘We’re old schoolfriends. I was very sad when she left. But her husband lost his job here during the seventies when the company he worked for went out of business, and they wanted to make a new life for themselves. I can’t blame them really. He’s in research.’

‘Very interesting.’

Cooper had learned just to make neutral noises while Mrs Shelley was speaking. Eventually, she might get round to telling him what he wanted to know, with a bit of nudging. But it was best to let her talk and get there at her own speed, otherwise she felt harassed and got irritable.

‘And this is the lady who’s taking the upstairs flat?’

‘No, of course not. Peggy is her daughter.’

‘I see.’

‘Now, Ben, I don’t want you to be rude to her.’

Cooper raised his hands. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’

‘Well, she’s American, you know.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with Americans.’

Mrs Shelley looked doubtful. ‘I’m not sure about that. She seems rather, well... exuberant.’

Cooper smiled. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

‘She doesn’t seem anything like my old friend, considering she’s her daughter. I don’t know what could have happened to her in Chicago. I suppose she must have got it from her father’s side. What do you think of this? I bought it in a craft gallery in Buxton, near the Crescent.’