Authors: Jonathan Gash
The earliest appointment Mrs Joan Daley, head teacher of the Gandulfo-Meegeren Educational Foundation, could give Lottie was ten o’clock the following morning. Lottie hardly slept, rose in the night to sit in the light with a magazine. She was afraid to switch on the television in case it woke people. Bray lay awake. They did not speak.
As they dressed Lottie wanted to know who she was supposed to be. Preparing, she bought a new waisted jacket she suspected might be too young, brown court shoes and a tweed skirt she supposed vaguely Continental. She felt dressed for some awful school play, Ophelia with a bad blouse.
Worst was, Bray refused to drive her to the school. He ordered her a cab. “I don’t know who I’m to be!” she wailed.
“You’ll do it right, love. Just be a returning American.”
“I said I was a Mrs Gunnell.” Which was as far as her inventiveness went. “There’s no point going there without you. What if —?”
He accompanied her in the taxi, resolutely averting his eyes as she alighted at the Foundation. Lottie stood, her
heart thumping, hands clammy. He sat hunched as the taxi drew away. Her lip would soon start trembling. Bray had dumped her here to what, rescue Davey, who would be as American as the rest? All Bray would say as they pecked at breakfast was that he had something to do.
The school emitted the faint hum of an active academy, just enough to convince. A secretary admitted her to the office of Mrs Joan Daley, who greeted her with evident pleasure, making a pitch for her school.
“How good to see you, Mrs Gunnell! Welcome to the Gandulfo-Meegeren. May it be the first of many welcomes.”
Lottie seated herself, admiring the plain functional office, the friendly air.
“You have a grandson, Mrs Gunnell,” Mrs Daley began. “Getting on for eight, I think you said?”
“Yes, seven and a half.” To her own astonishment she slipped easily into unprepared lies. “My husband and I are returning from duty overseas. My husband will be responsible for tuition of our grandson…” Oh, God, she thought in panic, what is the mythical boy called? “Jason. We returned early, to choose a school, help our son and daughter-in-law,” she added in a flash of inspiration. Shade the lies slightly, you could get away with murder.
“They’re still abroad?” Mrs Daley inquired, down to brass tacks.
“For three months. They’re concerned about class sizes.”
“We can give you a tour of the school, Mrs Gunnell. We have excellent facilities. Is Jason interested in sport?”
“Very!” Lottie exclaimed, wondering if she was overdoing it.
“You have a home in Tain, Mrs Gunnell? Or
home-hunting
?”
“Looking about.” Lottie felt a heart-stopping lurch at the head teacher’s choice of word. “My husband’s with realtors right now!”
“Excellent!”
Mrs Daley ushered Lottie out of the office. “Is Jason an only child – so far, Mrs Gunnell?”
“Yes, but in a year or so maybe plans will work out!”
Lottie saw a glint in the other’s eye at the prospect of yet another paying pupil.
“Class sizes optimize at twenty-eight, according to most researchers.” Mrs Daley opened doors onto the vacant assembly hall. “The Foundation limits to nineteen, though one class exceeds that by a visiting pupil from Kingston, Jamaica. The teacher-pupil ratio has to be kept below twenty to give each child sufficient attention…”
The hum of voices intensified as they walked the corridors. Lottie thought, this isn’t happening. It can’t be, not right here, with Davey possibly within arm’s reach. She glimpsed small heads in rows, faces turning to look at the passing visitor, teachers demanding concentration. One class seemed in darkness until Lottie heard the drone of a movie voice, some film instruction.
On the corridor walls, displays of drawings attracted her gaze. She smiled.
“How exotic! So many creatures!”
Mrs Daley laughed, not without exasperation.
“If it isn’t gremlins, worms, ants, or pterodactyls…”
“Those kites! So many balloons!” Lottie forced amusement.
“There’s been public criticism, Mrs Gunnell, about a TV competition for some valuable antique prize. They were all into it. Thank heavens it’s over!”
The thought that Bray’s missing grandson might have
actually crayoned one of the drawings on show shook Lottie. She looked away.
“A passing phase, don’t you agree?”
“I’m pleased they are! Heaven knows what the next fashion will be. It was so different when we were little girls, wasn’t it?”
They spoke of how compromised the children of today were by commerce. Lottie became a family woman deploring the tendency to rush the nation’s young into technocracy. Mrs Daley approved.
“You’re so right, Mrs Gunnell!” she cried.
She beckoned a teacher from a classroom.
“Mrs Gunnell, may I introduce Donna Curme, who teaches the age band of your Jason.” Mrs Daley explained her visitor’s purpose. “How many do you have, Donna? Eighteen?”
“That’s right, eighteen.” Miss Curme seemed a calm young woman who never let her gaze stray from her charges. “Two away at the moment. One on holiday, back tomorrow for prize day, the other at some family celebration.”
“What lovely photographs!” Lottie allowed herself to seem moved at the mounted prints, classes of children in rows.
Donna Curme gave her a shrewd glance. “They’re always popular, but there’s the usual difficulty.”
“Difficulty?”
“Always somebody at the dentist, trying out for some Little League team. Getting the whole class is quite a nightmare!”
They moved on. Lottie couldn’t resist glancing into the classroom as she said goodbye.
The clues might be here, she thought, but to gape would
expose her visit as a sham, and then what? She desperately hoped she’d done what Bray wanted.
Mrs Daley’s secretary called a cab. Lottie reached the motel to find that Bray had not yet returned. She showered and slept until he arrived at six, soon after Tain Central Library closed for the day.
Bray felt foolish. He’d rehearsed his questions on the way but hadn’t quite perfected it. The lady at Tain Central Library was helpful in a puzzled sort of way.
Local newspapers were computer indexed, with a
one-touch
operation. The later months were not yet entered, copies of
Tain Herald
available in stacks.
Schools were listed in gazetteers, with their year books and annual reports properly filed. He fortified himself with a glass of water and got down to it.
Kylee’s colour code squarely placed the Gandulfo-Meegeren Foundation in, what did they say nowadays, pole position. It was on page 372 of the 500-plus pages in the folder he’d abstracted from Kylee’s open-message columns. He’d had to suspend his laptop’s ferociously swift printout and used two reams completing it. Cautious, he avoided marking the school’s name. Oddly, two separate e-mail addresses showed for successive answers from the winning class.
Davey was at that school. In there. Bray could hardly breathe.
The child gave his name in all four:
I D Source: Carlson.
Which meant Carlson must be Davey’s new name. There couldn’t be any other explanation. A sudden anxiety swept through him. Please, he prayed silently, don’t let me have a heart attack, not at this stage. Let me keep going. His rejection of fatty foods, determined walks, evening exercises, the pathetic swims in hotel pools, surely must have done some good.
Readers’ desks were set out in a single line down one side of the large Reference Facility. The Local Research Section contained photocopiers, microfiche and consols.
He went through the annual reports first, scanning quickly, going over faces in school photographs. They were incomplete. None was Davey. Carlson was the surname of two children at one school, not the Gandulfo-Meegeren, and as a first name for a cheery coloured lad there. He perused photographs of prize winners.
No sign.
The newspapers gave negative evidence, helping him to exclude some groups. It seemed sensible to deduct at least two months – or should it be less, in case they’d indoctrinated Davey at speed? He just didn’t know. From what Doctor Newton had told him, medicaments could excise memory. There was that chemical, wasn’t there? He finally settled for one month, and got down to ploughing through the newspapers, searching for mentions of new boys at the G-M Foundation.
Carlson’s surname showed once or twice. Another lad – possibly a brother? – appeared in a swimming championship. Different school, though. Two girls also, all evidently older than Carlson, were class prize winners elsewhere. He found their photographs, proudly wearing award sashes, in a newspaper six months old. The same surname came to light nine times in the Tain phone book.
Painstakingly Bray noted them.
The day wore on. He was tempted to phone the motel and find out how Lottie had managed, instead considered property, wondering if he should search out sales of houses in Tain. Tain was a bustling town. There was no telling how far the town limits extended. United States conurbations varied widely, no correlation between acreage and population density.
No; he shelved real estate agents. If he happened on Davey’s face in some school photographs, it would be a simple matter to find the address, maybe concoct some imaginary out-of-state family connection. Jim might be of help there.
The hours ticked by too quickly. No sign of Davey. The reference lady returned from lunch. Bray exhausted the newspapers and made a start on church records. Why so many? Back home, you’d be hard put to find a chapel or cathedral that printed lists of its attenders. In Tain it seemed a positive obsession. He found lists of every persuasion –
“Can I help?”
Startled, Bray looked up. “No, thank you.” She was a pleasant tubby woman in thick glasses. “I’m doing well.”
“Only, you’ve not taken a break. Researching a book?”
“Populations,” he got out, indicating his heaped desk.
“I knew you’d be an academic. We get quite a few here. Tain has grown so. The aero plant, you see.”
They made aeroplanes in Tain? He managed to end the conversation by taking a rest. He took his files with him, went for a sandwich and returned quickly. The library was due to close at six. He panicked, called himself to heel and returned to the newspapers, compiling lists, numbers, teachers, community notables.
One list was of educational benefactors.
A giant aircraft corporation was the principal giver. The rest were recorded by the
Tain Tribune
, which pointed out the splendid way in which Tain supported the town’s commitment to learning and health.
He copied the addresses of benefactors. He
cross-referenced
them against recipient schools, the small University of Tain, secular and religious foundations. There was nothing, no face, nothing to tie in. He deliberated whether to call Kylee and question her scoring methods. She’d rightly ask what the fuck did he know. He could almost hear her voice, scathing in her condemnation, super lexics hadn’t the numerical brains of a fucking wart. It was her phrase.
“Don’t you fucking gerron at me, you ’cking geriatric,” she’d storm. “My numbers are right.”
Numbers. He knew what Kylee would do. She’d sit there for a split second, somehow revue all the numbers in her mind. She’d once told him it wasn’t seeing, just a feeling in her chest. And she’d then know that two, three, five, or any figures didn’t match. She’d also know that they varied by 0.0129 of one per cent, whatever, and be correct. It was a gift, unlike the pedantic learning others used. And, Bray thought, we normals scorned autistics and
semi-autistics
who were supra-genius level mathematicians and inventors. We even called them deranged. It was only right that Kylee should show a little scorn of her own.
Treacherously, he tried to work out how to check her numbers. How to do that? The only things were the photographs, and Davey wasn’t there.
The school’s annual reports and year books? He turned to the class photos.
Numbers in class? He counted the faces. Numbers in
class were as given, numbers of smiling faces before him. They matched of course.
Except for Class R4 of the Gandulfo-Meegeren Educational Foundation. It was Carlson’s class.
One child was absent.
Shakily he found the year book, thumbed through. A child was missing. The day of the class photograph, a boy was absent.
As would possibly happen, say, if the parents were anxious to prevent a child from being pictured? You’d not want it published. Was it somebody hiding from the light?
Clint H. Rappaporter was left out, had presumably stayed at home.
Tain had four Rappaporte addresses and phone numbers, only one Rappaporter with a terminal
er
.
He could hardly control his pen. The address was an apartment, not a house. He identified it on the town map, and tremblingly wrote the phone number. It matched the residence of a Foundation benefactor. In less than an hour, Bray had found the picture of Mr H.L. Rappaporter beaming at the head teacher of the Foundation as he handed over a cheque. No sign of a child.
He thanked the librarian for her assistance, and drove to the motel.
Lottie was already waiting, anxious to tell him what had transpired at the school. He heard her out.
“Call Jim,” he said. “We need him now. It’s time.”
“I’ve two problems,” Jim Stazio told them, mostly addressing Lottie. They were by the lakeside.
“I’ve only one,” Lottie said with feeling.
“Which is?” He watched children putting model boats in the water.
“Why don’t we call the authorities?” She couldn’t help feeling exasperated. “We’re so near!”
“And?” He waited. She didn’t know what to say. “Then it hits the fan, excuse me. Everything’s been tried to steal kids. Crooks, kidnappers, passing themselves off as FBI, IRS, any goddam thing, to spirit kids away. It’s big money.”
“Yes, but we’re genuine!”
“You know that. I know that. And, God knows, Bray knows it. We’ve had this out, Lottie. What if they scream blue murder and call the police? By the time it’s cleaned up, they’re in Panama, Columbia.”
“Thanks for dealing with my one problem,” she said unhappily. “Your two?”
“First problem,” Jim said heavily, leaning back on the bench, legs apart, “is how illegal you want to be?”
“Meaning we can simply…?” She couldn’t say it.
“Snatch the kid back.”
“Bray?” Lottie felt real terror. Until now it had been mere anxiety.
Jim said patiently, “We’re in reach. He lives in that very apartment. You’ve done the whole shebang and got here. We can’t just sit watching the water.” He waxed eloquent. “Let the perps whisk him off where we can’t follow?”
“Jim,” Lottie warned their friend.
Two children were pushing a toy sailing boat from the sandy beach, their father crouching, using a stick to keep it from turning back. It made a pretty picture. He could see the penthouse where Clint lived. Lights were on in the long picture windows. Were they there, perhaps looking out?
“It’s got to be said, Lottie.”
“And your second?”
“When to call in the boys.”
“The police?”
“My pals. I’ve friends still serving officers. They’d be out of their jurisdiction. We could bring in the locals, then the FBI. It’s a federal crime. Coupla calls.”
“Bring the police.” Lottie couldn’t resist triumph. “As I said!”
Bray cleared his throat. An ice cream van pulled in, children making for it. A small group playing softball disintegrated and drifted over.
“Can we be certain Davey’s back?” he asked Jim.
“He’s going to school tomorrow,” Jim said firmly. “I made calls. I was a doctor from Immunisation Records. I sounded great.”
“For sure?”
“Certain, Lottie. Nobody brings a kid home first day of
school. The day before, sure.”
“Then I think we —”
Bray rose abruptly and walked quickly away past the ice cream vendor and into the ornamental garden.
“Bray?” Lottie wondered whether to go after him.
“Let him be,” Jim told her.
She followed the direction of Jim’s gaze. From the apartment building a small family group emerged. They took the lakeside path towards the boat hard where she and Jim were seated. Her heart seemed to swell, almost stifling her. She struggled to look away and failed.
One figure was a portly man in a dark overcoat. The woman was stout, Lottie guessing her age about fifty, definitely greying, smartly dressed, with sensible shoes and accessories. A typical wealthy middle-aged couple out for a stroll.
And a boy. Going on eight?
He carried a model sailing ship with white sails, swooping it about. They came nearer. She distinctly heard him go “Wooosh! Wooosh!” and whistling to simulate a high wind. He saw the ice cream van. The woman shook her head. The boy ran instead to the edge of the lake and floated his ship.
Two people following the family group at a casual stroll suddenly closed in on the boy. The man was athletic, looking round. His gaze lingered for an instant on Jim Stazio and Lottie before moving on. Lottie realised that Jim was holding her hand, presenting a picture of a fond couple. The woman with the guard stood talking to the boy until he left the waterside and returned to the other couple.
Lottie realised she had nearly thought
returned to his mother
. Rejoined the evil perpetrators, was better.
She and Jim talked intimately until the group had gone by, the blond couple trailing behind. After they’d gone from view she scanned the gardens. Bray was nowhere. He must have observed them come out and gone to earth.
Jim nudged her. “Now we know.”
“What?”
“A cavalry charge wouldn’t work. They got guards. So they’ve enough money to hire every lawyer up to the Supreme Court.”
“I’ve seen Davey,” was all Lottie could think or say. Her eyes filled. “You see, Jim? It’s worked out! He’s alive. He’s here. He’s safe.”
“He’s fucking theirs,” Jim capped sourly. “Where’s Bray? We got to move.”