As he stood up he glanced around. There was a free machine on the other side of the aisle nearer to Noble and Raymond; Larkin moved towards it, his body jangling with his pocketed winnings as he went. This one was a fruit machine, a modern one with so many different lights, rules and intricacies that it would have been easier to sort out the troubles in Northern Ireland than to have a decent game on it. Larkin stuck some coins in and focused on the conversation.
“Oh, listen,” Noble was saying, as if the thought had just struck him, “what are you doing at the weekend?”
Raymond thought. “Er … just, yu’knaw. Just hangin’ round, wi’ Kev an’ that …”
“Well, I was wondering,” Noble began, his Scottish lilt like the purr of a hunting tiger, “I mean, your mate Kev might be interested as well — ”
“Are you ganna just stand there?”
The voice was loud, indignant, and coming from right beside Larkin. He looked around. There stood an old woman, one of those who had witnessed Larkin’s jackpot win, and had allowed it to put a crust on her bitterness in the process.
“Sorry?”
“Aye, so you should be. You’re just standin’ there like one o’clock half struck. Get out the way and let someone else have a go.”
Larkin glanced over at Raymond; the child’s face had spread into a grin and he was nodding. Noble too was smiling. A smile of triumph? Larkin looked back at the woman: she had the pinched, beady look of a constipated eagle.
“I’ll be finished in a minute.”
“You’re not doin’ anythin’. Look at you.”
Larkin stuck another coin in. “There. You happy? Now shut up and wait your turn.”
He turned back to the two in the cafe. They had stood up and were beginning to make their way out.
“That’s disgraceful, that is. I’m callin’ the manager.”
“Look, one minute, and you can have this machine for as long as you want.” He heard Raymond say, “Friday, then? Five thirty?” and saw Noble nod. The beaked woman was getting ready to squawk again.
“I’m goin’ to tell the manager anyway. We don’t like your sort in here.”
At that moment, Raymond walked jauntily past the two of them, smiling to himself. Noble was also beginning to move in Larkin’s direction. Trying to think fast, Larkin grabbed hold of the old woman by the arm and propelled her down the aisle.
“Get your hands off me, you — ” she began to say, but Larkin silenced her.
“Shut it.”
He ducked down a small side aisle with his back to the main aisle. He stared hard at the shocked woman as Noble walked past them, not even giving them a glance. Larkin watched him out of the door, and turned back to his female assistant.
She didn’t look like an eagle anymore: just a frightened old woman in fear of her life.
Well done
, thought Larkin.
You’re terrorising pensioners now.
“I’m sorry, pet.”
As a guilt-stricken attempt at restitution, he dug into his pockets – which caused her to flinch – and brought out his winnings.
“Here, take these,” he said, stuffing the money into her rigid palms as she stood dumbfounded. “Take it. I’m sorry.”
Before the woman had a chance to speak, scream or burst into tears, Larkin turned and rushed out of the door, squinting as the light hit his eyes. He looked up and down Clayton Street, but there was no sign of either Noble or Raymond.
“Aw, bollocks,” he said out loud, and trudged off to look for his car.
Dusk was gathering and the city was changing from day to evening wear. Everywhere, one set of people ceased to be and another kind sprang to life, as if the clarity of order was giving way to the chaos of darkness.
Like the rest of the city, the Chinese restaurants in the mini-Chinatown of Stowell Street were gearing themselves up for another night: their gaudy signs offering “authentic Geordie” Cantonese food, their serving staff fixing on smiles, their kitchens frying up rice.
At the back of one restaurant, however, it was a different story. Inside a battered doorway ringed by overflowing dustbins full of discarded, rotting slop, and up a flight of bare, aged wooden stairs, was a room. It was small, dingy and cheap. The walls yellowed and stained with age, the windows painted and grimed shut, and the floor unvarnished boards. In the middle of the room sat an old, chipped desk, cluttered with piles of teetering papers and topped off by hardened, mould-encrusted coffee mugs. A kettle, a jar of Nescafé and an empty milk carton nestled round a plug socket in the corner; a virtually empty whisky bottle and a greasy glass perched on the edge of the desk. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, as if that alone could keep the darkness at bay.
On the far wall opposite the window was all the attendant paraphernalia of an ongoing police investigation in photocopied reproduction. There were photos, maps with areas circled, notes tacked up and, adjacent to that, an old blackboard. Chalked on it was a grisly family tree starting with one name – JASON WINSHIP. Branches led to events, incidents and suppositions, but as yet there was no final offspring: no kidnapper, or murderer.
DI Henry Moir sat with his feet up on the desk and his massive backside jammed into an old swivel chair, punishing the suspension. His ample stomach strained at his shirt buttons. He was a big man; judging from his shabby clothes and holed shoes, his unshaven face and unwashed hair, it seemed as if his appetite wasn’t the only thing to have been given free rein. He looked, to the casual observer, to be a man who was only one step away from a wino. But behind the red-rimmed eyes, testament to too much whisky and not enough sleep, there was the camouflaged sparkle of a keen intelligence coupled with a wounded but as yet unbroken sense of humanity.
He preferred working alone and the comfortless room had become his private office, his
sanctum sanctorum
, his temporary home. He took another belt of whisky and thought about the case.
Jason Winship had disappeared nearly a week ago, abducted, as far as the police could tell, from a strip of waste ground in Byker while playing truant from school. The area was a demolition site between two warehouses sloping towards the river; about half a mile away, some Rebirth of the Region work was taking place. A pitted dirt track, invisible from the main road, ran down the side of one of the warehouses; this, Moir and his team had surmised, was the exact location of the abduction.
Moir had been put in charge of one of the biggest manhunt teams in the history of the region. The form that the investigation had taken had been dictated by his boss, Chief Superintendent McMahon. Part investigation, part high-profile PR stunt, it involved widespread door-to-door canvassing in the Byker area, with the results fed into a computer for cross-referencing. Since they didn’t know precisely what they were cross-referencing for, they had reached no conclusive results. A hugely expensive waste of time, thought Moir.
The only thing that the exercise had yielded was the somewhat confused testimony of a middle-aged meths-drinker who
may
have seen a large car – make and colour unknown – driven by a smartly dressed, middle-aged man, in the area at around the time they thought Jason had disappeared. It wasn’t much to go on.
All Moir had left was gut feeling. He knew that the kidnapper was a true predator, choosing his time and location carefully, making sure his prey was separated from the main herd before he struck. The official deadline of forty-eight hours had passed; Moir didn’t hold out much hope now of finding Jason alive. He hoped that his passing had been brief and painless. But he doubted it.
The boy’s parents had been informed of the disappearance. His mother still lived in Byker, her main purpose in life being to offer her bed – and, by way of consolation, herself – to whoever was too pissed to find his way home from The Rising Sun on a Friday night. Jason’s father was currently serving seven years in Durham for a series of startlingly inept burglaries.
At the first appearance of the police at the front door of her Byker flat, Mandy Winship had given the expected response. Her eyes had slitted into suspicion and her mouth was readying the insults before her brain had kicked in. After Moir told her about Jason’s disappearance, however, her mood immediately changed. Shock, then, gradually, anger took over, as she attempted to assuage her own guilt by screaming that the teachers should have watched him better, that the police – presumably by some massive act of clairvoyance – should never have allowed it to happen. Moir had stood impassively as she blamed everyone but herself and eventually collapsed into a heap of jagged, snotty sobs.
Since experience had taught the police that in cases of this nature it was usually someone either in the family or close to it that was the culprit, they had questioned her at length, but she was of no help. They asked her about Jason’s schooling; his habits; friends; enemies. From the vagueness of her answers she might have been referring to a ghost that occasionally passed uninvited through her flat. They’d questioned her boyfriends and got the same response – basically, Jason was a nuisance when they were trying to get Mandy’s kit off. They had then questioned Jason’s contemporaries at school – a surly bunch of next-generation recidivists – and, again, got nowhere. The whole lot of them wore their inbred reluctance to talk to the police as a badge of honour, even if it meant leaving a possible murderer uncaught. No, nothing was bothering Jason. He’d just wandered off. No, he hadn’t mentioned meeting anyone; no, he hadn’t gone to the wasteground with a purpose. Another blank.
Moir and his team then hit the computers, linking up with the Paedophile and Child Sex Crimes Unit to target the paedophile networks. They started by contacting all the known abusers within a fifty-mile radius, paying particular attention to anyone who might fit the meths-drinker’s hazy discription, and checking their alibis. Nothing.
They had hooked up with their tame contacts in the Paedophile Information Exchange to see if one of their number had recently
requested a teenage boy. The thought of contacting this organisation in the first place repulsed Moir completely; he had even toyed with the idea of noting a few names and addresses and paying them an unofficial visit sometime. The only thing that stopped him was the need to follow the official line – by condoning and controlling a small evil it was possible to monitor and stifle a greater one. Allegedly. At any rate, that thin line of inquiry had yielded nothing. Moir found this both comforting and disturbing.
He had deduced that the kidnapper had taken Jason for his own uses and that he had no police record. If he was a peripatetic opportunist there was no way they could even put together a profile of him, let alone catch him. Not until he struck again. The other theory Moir had was that the abductor’s identity was known and protected. That he had enough brain and muscle not to draw attention to himself. Whatever, they had a problem.
Moir slumped further back into his chair, kicked his shoes off and flexed his toes. He wasn’t a natural team player and was surprised to have been put in charge of such a high-profile case. He had never been one to court popularity, and certainly wasn’t one of McMahon’s favourites.
He grunted and looked round the room. His private office contained duplicates of all the case notes so far; this was where he came to think when the rest of his team went to their homes at night. The trouble was, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on Jason Winship, another lost child kept wandering into his head.
He could see her face in his mind’s eye, coming towards him over and over again, spooling round his brain like an old home movie. Her face, at first innocent and trusting, became disappointed, then snide and sarcastic, finally consumed with bitterness and bile. There were no words to accompany this film. But Moir knew them off by heart.
He was reaching out for another shot of whisky to blur the image when there was a knock at the door. Moir’s hand stopped in mid-pour. No one was supposed to know he was here. With a great effort he eased himself out of the chair. Irritated, he pulled open the door; the person behind it did nothing to improve his mood.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s very nice to see you too, Henry,” said Larkin.
“What d’you want? How did you find me?” grumbled Moir.
“Is this supposed to be your secret hideaway, then? Come on,
Henry – everyone knows about this place. It’s about as secret as Fergie’s Shag List. Can I come in?”
With a scowl Moir unblocked the door and resettled himself in his chair.
Larkin looked around. “Well, it’s not everyone’s idea of home but it suits you.” He pointed to a haphazard collection of files that were cluttering up one corner. “I’ll bet there’s Japanese airmen living in there who don’t know the Second World War’s over yet.”
Moir’s eyes turned into beady little dots. “Tell me what you want then fuck off.”
“Charming. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“Help your fuckin’ self. You usually do.”
Larkin did so, topping up Moir’s glass at the same time. Pleasantries concluded, they got down to business.
“I need your help,” said Larkin.
“You do surprise me.”
“I think it might have a bearing on the case you’re working on.”
Moir snorted; it wasn’t an endearing sound. “It better have.”
Larkin told him about his trip to see Jane and his encounter with Noble, and Moir listened with growing interest. Larkin concluded and sat back on the corner of the desk, fighting for space against the clutter of papers, and sipped his drink as Moir tapped an index finger against his chin and looked pensive. Just as the gesture was becoming irritating, he spoke.
“So you’ve no idea what he’s up to this weekend?”
“None at all,” said Larkin. “I doubt it’s going to be sweetness and light, though. From the way he spoke to this kid it looked like they knew each other. I got the impression he’s been planning this a while.”
“Aye, that’s how they work. Get into a position of friendship and trust, then make their move. Trouble is, he’s done nothing that we can prove so far.”
“I know that,” said Larkin. “But I’ve got an idea. You get some background on him – you know, see if he’s got any previous, if he’s got an alibi for when that kid disappeared, that sort of thing – and I’ll keep an eye on him. Let you know if he does anything that you need to arrest him for.”