The Pure in Heart (17 page)

Now, she was going to start on the racks. God knew what was in most of the boxes. Old toys. Old tools. Old files. Old clothes. Old. Old. Old. Why had they kept all this stuff?
Because there was space to keep it in. She was going to take down every box and open it, go through the contents, sort them, and throw away, ruthlessly. It was the only thing she could do, a job which occupied her, tired her,
needed doing and could be done while most of her self was elsewhere.

With David.

Where?

A small rail ran round inside her head like a toy train, carrying boxes and bundles
and bags and every so often an item would fall off and down a chute, to land in front of her, demanding her attention. She had to pick it up. She could do no other. She had to open it. She had to examine the contents.

This time the box contained a picture of David as he had first emerged from her body, slippery, flushing pink as she looked, eyes tight shut against the light, arms flailing. Hair.
A shock of dark, Struwwelpeter hair. For a split second he was upside down. His genitals had looked huge, like strange growths against the tiny damp limbs.

She stood in the cold garage staring, staring at the contents of the box under the forensic light. She was conscious of the smell of oil on the old gloves but not of the cold at all.

For a moment, she wondered what she was doing here and
why. For another moment she could not remember her own name.

‘Marilyn?’

The door into the house had opened. There was a woman. Who was she? She looked slightly familiar. Friendly. Marilyn felt she ought to be polite but did not know quite in what way.

‘The Chief Inspector is here.’

The woman came forward quickly. The woman laid her hand on her arm.

‘There isn’t any news. He just needs to
see you.’

The woman standing beside her was the FLO. Kate? Yes, Kate something.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re freezing. You’ve been out here too long.’

‘Have I?’

She could not remember how long or what she had been doing. There seemed to be a lot of bags and boxes at her feet and the freezer lid was up.

‘Come on, I’ll finish this after I’ve made some tea … come into the warm.’

She let the girl lead
her into the kitchen, and help her off with what seemed to be Alan’s old sheepskin jacket. Her hands smelled of oil.

‘Do you want a minute? He’ll wait …’

He?

It was warm in the kitchen. Thawing was like coming out of a dream.

‘The DCI.’

There was a sudden pain through her heart as she remembered.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’

Simon Serrailler. She still could not think of him as a policeman.
Serraillers were doctors.

She walked into the sitting room.

‘Sit down please … there’ll be some tea.’ She smiled. ‘I dread to think what our tea bill is going to be.’

Then she put her arm up and leaned it on the mantelpiece before bursting into sobs so desperate and raw that Simon was startled by them.

He got up and handed her the box of tissues from the coffee table. It happened often enough
and he understood it, this terrible, heart-rending crying. He waited awkwardly. In the end she shook her head, wiped her face and sat down.

She looks a hundred years old, Simon thought, or no age, no human age looks like this.

‘I want to be dead.’

‘Mrs Angus, we’re –’

‘No, please do not tell me you are doing everything in your power to find him. You think you are, but it isn’t enough … nothing
is enough, nothing short of every single human being in this country dropping what they are doing and looking for him.’

‘Yes,’ Simon said quietly.

The FLO handed him a cup of tea.

‘But I’m here to talk to you about what we plan … With your agreement, I’d like to do a reconstruction of David’s last-known movements.’

Marilyn stared at him. She lifted her teacup but set it down again, her hand
shaking.

‘How can you do that? David isn’t here.’

‘We’ll have a boy the same age, same height and colouring, same school uniform … as much like David as possible … he would …’

‘Pretend to be David.’

‘That’s the way it works, yes.’

‘And I would … be myself?’

‘Yes … we’d try to get neighbours and people who were driving down the avenue that morning … people walking … everything … as near as
possible to replicate it. It’s a hard thing to have to do but it really could give us the key. Someone doing the same thing in the same way as they were doing it that day may have a flash of recollection … something they saw, a car, a pedestrian … something they heard. I know you want to do anything possible.’

‘Will Alan have to do this?’

‘He will have to do as he did that morning. He left for
the hospital forty minutes before you and David came out of the house?’

‘Yes. The only way Alan can deal with this is by working.’

Simon stood up. ‘Everyone has their own way of trying to cope. We’ll give Kate details of the arrangements for the day after tomorrow. I know how distressing it will be but it could be vitally important.’

‘But what boy can you get …? You don’t know the boys.’

‘Leave it to us.’

‘I was clearing out some shelves. It was so cold out there. Do you think David is cold? Whoever … if they are looking after him … he only had his blazer, you see.’

Leaving the house, Serrailler felt angry with Alan Angus, so anxiously defended by his wife, so
wrapped up in work that he left her alone all day with a policewoman. It might be his way of coping but Simon questioned
the humanity of it, let alone whether a neurosurgeon required to perform intricate life-saving brain operations and whose nine-year-old son had been missing for several days was able do his job properly.

Before returning to the station, Serrailler drove into Lafferton and stopped at the florist. She liked something bright … a big bunch of red and orange and yellow. He added a red balloon. The
whole looked garish and festive and slightly ridiculous sitting in the boot of Simon’s car. It pleased him.

‘Lee?’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Andy Gunton.’

For several seconds there was nothing but loud and derisive laughter. Andy almost put the phone back.

‘Dear oh dear, let me wipe my eyes … tell you what, I knew you’d be on to me before long. But it’s making me laugh all the same. You coming to cut my lawn or what?’

Andy clenched his fingers into his palm to stop himself from swearing. Calm
and reasonable, he’d decided.

‘You said there might be a job – in your club.’

‘You said you wanted to work in God’s fresh, couldn’t stand being cooped up in an office, you said.’

‘OK, is there a job or isn’t there?’

‘Depends. Not in the club there isn’t, I’ve got a couple of smartly dressed young chaps right here … besides you ain’t interested in racing.’

Andy waited.

‘I might have something
else.’

‘Legit. It’d have to be.’

‘For who?’

‘Legit.’

‘I don’t do criminal. I’m grown up, And.’

‘Right.’

‘Know the Crown on the Starly Road?

‘I’ll find it.’

‘Half six.’

The phone went dead.

Andy Gunton stepped out of the kiosk. If he hadn’t made the call he’d be stacking shelves in the supermarket overnight – either that or homeless.

‘You don’t get yourself a job by this time next week,
Pete says, you’re out of here; there’s jobs, And, you ain’t dossing in Matt’s room any longer.’

He had given up on anything he was trained for, at least until later on in the spring. He had to get some money behind him somehow, then a place of his own, then find a way of starting up his market garden. He needed a backer, or a partner at any rate, and working for Lee Carter might lead him to someone.

The pub was a mile out of the town centre, on a nondescript corner, not the sort of pub anyone would find their way to unless it was their local. Andy wondered how it kept going. It smelled stale.

The mirrors behind the bar wanted cleaning. There was a poster on the wall for a circus that had left town three weeks ago. Next to it was the poster
about the missing boy. Andy looked at his face and
looked away again. He saw him everywhere.

Lee Carter’s car turned into the pub drive at exactly six thirty. He walked into the bar and straight up to the counter, ordered a double tomato juice, came over to Andy and took off his leather jacket with a flourish.

‘Like it?’

The jacket was like the car.

‘Very nice.’

‘You work for me, all this could be yours, my son. You got all you want to drink
there?’ Andy nodded.

‘Cheers. Now then, And … cars.’

‘What about cars?’

‘Know anything?’

Andy shrugged. ‘I’m no mechanic.’

‘Wouldn’t need to be. See, what I do is, I dabble in import-export and sometimes it’s cars. Export mainly. I buy this, sell that, ship the other … good money.’

‘What’d I be doing?’

‘Driving, picking up from here, dropping off there, bit of smartening up … whatever.’

‘What kind of cars?’

Lee Carter smiled a fat, smug smile. ‘Top of the range. No money in heaps of rusty tin. Mercs, Beamers, Jags, Rangers.’

‘Bloody hell. Where’d you get ’em?’

Lee’s smile iced over. ‘First thing you know when you work for me is how to keep this shut.’ He gestured.

‘When do I work, nine till five sort of thing?’

Lee laughed, picked up Andy’s glass without asking or answering,
and went to the bar.

Andy wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to make it feel cleaner. He had buzzing in his ears. Buzzing along his veins. Buzzing through his head. Warning buzzing. Get up, he told himself, get up now and walk away. Remember where you’ve just come from? Remember what it felt like?

Lee set the pint glass in front of him. The head frothed up over the rim.

‘Here’s to
it.’

Andy drank without speaking.

‘When you work,’ Lee said, straddling the chair, ‘is when you’re told. I ring you, or someone else does. You’ll be told where to go, what to do. When.’

Andy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. This don’t sound legit to me, this don’t sound like straight car dealing.’

‘You reckon? Like I said, this is export. Not your garage forecourt with your Aftershave Nigel
trying to flog you a tin coffin. I told you, this is different.’

‘Yeah, illegal different.’

‘Nothing illegal about exporting cars, And. Happens every day. Why not? You come to the office, you see the yards of fucking paperwork I have to fill in, customs this and excise bloody that … I ain’t doing that if exporting isn’t legal, right?’

Andy looked at him. He had that straight, blue-eyed gaze
which held yours. There were lunatics and
murderers and paedophiles who couldn’t look you in the eye and then there were the conmen, who always did.

Only he needed a job.

‘When do I start?’

‘You got a mobile?’

Andy laughed.

‘Right, I’ll sort it. Meet me Thursday, Dino’s in Queen Street. Eleven o’clock.’

‘Bloody hell, Dino’s …’

‘He’s still there … only it’s Alfredo taken over now, and he’s
got a missus. Dad sent him off to Italy, they’d got it all fixed before he went, came back with Lina. Smashing girl.’

For a second, Andy Gunton forgot who he was talking to – forgot Lee Carter had been one of the reasons he’d done five years in prison, forgot you couldn’t trust him, not ever, and that he’d be daft if he went to work for him. Forgot he ought not to be in this pub drinking with
him now. All he remembered was when they’d been in school together and Fredo Jaconelli had been with them and they’d all piled into Dino’s after school and on Saturday afternoons and drunk Cokes and eaten Knickerbocker Glories in tall glasses with long spoons. If Fredo’s dad was feeling generous, they’d had one each; if not, one between them and however many spoons it took. Dino’s.

‘Machine still
makes the same noise. They still got cherries on the wallpaper and plastic pineapples full of sugar.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘They weren’t though.’ Lee Carter stood up.

‘What?’

‘The days. Just in case you said they was. Crap, those days were. These are the days, Andy, and don’t you bloody forget it.’

Lee Carter shrugged on his leather jacket and walked out of the pub without a backward glance.

By the time Andy followed him it was raining, hard, straight, steady rain which had him dodging in and out of doorways and hanging about under shop awnings which then tipped water down the neck of his jacket. He had no raincoat – no coat at all. He stood, looking into the window of an electrical shop at convector heaters and steam irons. He knew what he wanted. He wanted his own house, his own front
room, sofa, television, radiator, carpets. His own door, his own key. Freedom as freedom was no longer enough. The thrill of being able to go out and walk about as he pleased, enter a pub or a shop or a café when he liked, all of it had worn off. He was a stage further on. He had started to be discontented, even irritable. To want more. A lot more.

He dodged between doorways and stood waiting
for a bus to the Dulcie estate.

Michelle was out. Pete was in the kitchen.

‘Been wanting to have a word with you,’ Pete said, standing in the doorway with his hands on either side, his stomach falling out over his belt. He
had a line of moustache and a line of beard drawn round his chin and stubble between. Underneath, his skin was pink as pork. Andy imagined him in prison as one of the screws
who bullied and had favourites and played nasty little tricks. He’d never understood his sister having anything to do with Pete.

‘I hope Michelle’s not standing outside that paed’s house in this lot,’ he said, pulling off his jacket.

‘Up to her. We don’t want them perverts here. This is respectable.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since until you got out.’

‘Can I put this by the stove to dry out.’

Pete
stood solid as a chopping block, unmoving in the doorway.

‘OK, suit yourself.’