Looking for Trouble (2 page)

‘What about drugs?’

She shook her head.

‘You’re married? How did Martin get on with his father?’

She considered her reply.

‘Okay. They’re both quiet, never that close.’

‘Was Martin lonely, Mrs Hobbs? Was he unhappy?’

Maybe it wasn’t the most sensitive question to ask. But I was trying to fathom out a reason for Martin’s disappearance. He was a loner, not close to anyone except Mum. Adolescence was a terrible time – even when you had close friends; without them it must be intolerable. But why leave home? An attempt to break away from Mum? Had Martin perhaps blamed her for his loneliness?

She covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head from side to side. Tears welled in those brown eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know.’ Guilt and grief.

I tried to bring her back to the task in hand. ‘Think for a minute. Is there anywhere Martin might have gone – relatives, a place he knew well, friends of the family?’

She pulled a lace-trimmed hanky from her bag, wiped her nose and eyes, took a shaky breath. ‘No, I’ve .racked my brains. We’ve no relatives round here, we’re a small family. I’m so worried, it’s just not like him. Will you look for him?’ Her eyes were pleading.

‘Mrs Hobbs, there’s so little to go on. If Martin wants to stay missing, he will.’

‘But you’ll try?’

‘Look, I can ask around a bit. A lot of youngsters drift into Manchester initially...but after a month...If I don’t get any leads in the first couple of days, I really don’t think it would be worth pursuing. You’d be wasting your money.’

‘Thank you.’ The hanky came out again.

‘I need a recent photo.’

‘Yes.’ She fumbled in her bag. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t any good ones. We had a fire you see, last year. The lounge got the worst of it, the albums...’

She handed me two snapshots and a newspaper clipping. Both photographs were outdoor shots, full-length, taken from a distance. In one, a slight dark-haired boy in school uniform stood by a bus-stop; in the other, the same figure, in a waxed jacket, sat at the edge of some water surrounded by fishing tackle.

‘That’s up at Lostock. Rumworth Reservoir,’ she said. ‘He liked it there.’ It was a better shot of the reservoir than it was of Martin.

The newspaper cutting showed a smiling Martin holding up an eight pound carp. It was faded and grainy but it showed his face more clearly than either of the photos. There was an elfin look to him; pointed chin, slight nose, cap of dark hair. His face seemed lit up by that smile.

‘I’ll get copies done of these, then you can have them back.’

‘I brought some money.’ She fumbled with the clasp of her purse. Drew out an envelope. Cash. A thousand pounds.

‘This is far too much,’ I protested.

We wrangled for a while. She insisted I keep the money and, if I did end up resigning after two or three days, I could send her the difference. Oh, well. It’d be a pleasant surprise for the assistant bank manager, with whom I had such a lively exchange of letters.

I made a note of Mrs Hobbs’ phone number and told her I’d be in touch early the following week, unless I had any news before then. She thanked me about twenty times on the way to the door. I began to wonder whether she might have been Martin’s problem, finding it hard to let him go, not knowing how to give him the space to grow up and away from her. Perhaps. But, for now, my task was to find out where he’d gone, not why he’d left.

I jotted down a few starting points; hostels, his school, the reservoir at Lostock, Manchester. Impressive, eh? I rang my friend Chris, who works in the housing department and, after the usual exchange of pleasantries, asked her to give me a list of the hostels in the city, particularly any popular with young people. And any other places she knew of where a runaway might end up. She was about to start a meeting and promised to pop round after work with the information I wanted.

I rang St. Matthew’s High School to check what time lunch was. It might be tricky trying to book appointments with form teachers, trying to establish over the phone what lessons Martin had liked best. I reckoned the best bet would be to just turn up unannounced, ask around the staff room and the playground. People would give more away if they were caught unawares. No time to provide neat cameos of the truth. It’d be Monday before I could get up there but the hostels would be open all weekend.

I looked bleakly at the drying ceiling. The remaining walls were begging to be given the same treatment but I’d lost my momentum. I’d try and find it again some time next week. There’d be no chance over the weekend. Some activities don’t go with children and decorating’s one of them.

I shut up shop and left a note on the Dobson’s kitchen table apologising for the appalling smell. The fumes seemed to have risen through the house with a vengeance, strong enough to make my eyes water.

After nipping home for a bite to eat, I swapped my Mini for my pushbike and hurried to deposit the money in the bank. I was certain to be mugged before I got there. Couldn’t everyone tell I was carrying a grand in my rucksack? A thousand pounds. When I draw money out, they always trot off to check the computer while I sweat it out, trying not to look worried. This time I expected a little respect and admiration. A smile perhaps, a financial nod and a wink. No such look. Bland indifference. Perhaps they sensed the money wasn’t truly all mine – not yet – probably not ever, if the case was as fruitless as I expected.

I needed photocopies of Martin’s photographs. There was a photocopier at the library. The library was shut. Industrial action. The council had promised to regrade the staff years before; the staff were still waiting. And fed up to the back teeth. So was I.

I cycled over to the newsagent’s that had a photocopier and got five of each of the photos and ten enlargements of the newspaper cutting. It was time to go and collect Maddie from nursery school. My working day was over. Paid work, that is. The second shift was just beginning.

Home is a large, slightly shabby Victorian semi in Withington, south Manchester. Solid red brick with crumbling stained glass, high ceilings, big rooms and a wonderful garden. Withington houses a mix of people; families, students, workers from Christie’s hospital. The area has an old-fashioned swimming pool, a library, a health-food shop and its very own fleapit style cinema.

Maddie and I share the house with Ray and his little boy, Tom. It’s a strictly platonic arrangement. We rent the attic flat out to a lodger.

Tom’s a year younger than Maddie, a fact he’s never allowed to forget. He’s developed the resilience of a second child. The four of us get along pretty well, though Ray and I have our moments, a bit like the kids. Just like the kids. Resentment and squabbling, usually over the chores. Ray sulks, I bully, he flies off the handle and flounces off to do whatever hasn’t been done (it’s always a one-way nag) and peace is restored. Life is humdrum, domestic. We take turns babysitting but neither of us paints the town red when unleashed. We just shuffle along to the local for a couple of pints with old friends. Every few months Ray meets a new woman and takes to wearing aftershave and trimming his moustache. But it never seems to amount to much and he appears more or less content with his lot. He potters around, building furniture in the cellar, which is a labour of love rather than an economic proposition, and spends hours hunched over his computer. Ray’s doing a part-time computing course at Salford Tech. He hopes it’ll help him earn a decent income. To date, all it’s generated is a lot of indecent language.

I made tea for Tom and Maddie and let them eat it picnic-style in the garden, then slung some vegetables into a pan with half a jar of Nazir’s Vindaloo Sauce for Ray and I to eat later. Chris arrived in the gap before bedtime. We sat in the kitchen, tea in hand.

‘How’s the new lodger?’ she asked, raising her eyes heavenwards.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘That bad?’

‘I think so. No sign of improvement. He’s away till Thursday. But then...we’re going to have to do something. We can’t go on like this. It’s getting so I dread coming into the kitchen in case he’s brewing up. It’s your fault,’ I rounded on Chris, ‘if you hadn’t moved out, we wouldn’t have ended up with him.’

Chris giggled. ‘I’ve got the stuff you wanted.’ She foraged in a battered briefcase and drew out a large manila envelope. Inside were lists of hostels.

‘These are the two direct access ones: the Direct Access Centre and Peterloo. I’ve marked them with an asterisk. They take people straight off the street, always keep a few beds free, sort people out with Welfare Advice the next day, try and get them into a B & B. The rest are the general hostels, men’s and women’s; some are church-run. Most of them expect payment, unlike the direct access ones. What do you want them for?’

‘I’m on a case, missing person. He left home with no money, nowhere to go, as far as his mother knows. It’s possible he came to Manchester, stayed in a hostel. I can check these...

‘No chance,’ Chris interrupted. ‘They won’t tell you anything. It’s confidential.’

‘But if I explain...’

Chris shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter, they have to protect people. No-one’s given that information.’

‘But all I need to know is whether he’s stayed in any of the hostels, nothing else.’

‘They can’t tell you that, Sal. They won’t even tell family. It’s a strict rule. It has to be.’

‘Shit!’

‘C’mon,’ Chris remonstrated, ‘if they start giving out that sort of information, no-one would trust the hostels...’

‘I know, I know...I didn’t think. It’s just, how am I supposed to start looking? I don’t even know if he came to Manchester.’ I cleared away the mugs. ‘What about kids who don’t use the hostels? Are there any places they regularly sleep out?’

‘Well, we haven’t got a cardboard city or anything like that. There used to be quite a lot of people under the arches, round Ardwick and down Whitworth Street in town. The council have got heavier on people sleeping rough; they don’t like to admit it still goes on. There’s still a bit of squatting, too, mainly in the old buildings in town – warehouses, places that are waiting demolition or re-development.’

‘I suppose I’ll just have to ask around. Thanks anyway. At least I didn’t go making a fool of myself trying to get blood out of a stone.’

‘Be careful. Visitors aren’t exactly welcome. A lot of those kids have good reason for leaving home, but there’s no provision for them. They’re constantly hassled by the police; after all, a lot of them have to thieve or beg to get by. They might not take kindly to anyone snooping around.’

‘Point taken. I’ll be careful.’

Later, when Ray had put the kids to bed and we’d eaten, I wandered into the garden to clear up the toys. It was still light, though the cloudy sky threatened rain. I spent an hour staking up straggling carnations and gathering up mammoth brown slugs that had been munching their way through my bedding plants. I dropped them in the beer traps. The traps had been fairly successful but had begun to smell appalling. I’d have to clean them out and replenish them. Tomorrow. By the time I’d finished, a light rain had begun to fall along with darkness.

I climbed into a hot bath and soaked the lilac paint from my hair. The weekend stretched ahead with its pattern of chores and outings. Martin Hobbs was on hold till Monday. I wondered where he was sleeping tonight. Somewhere safe and dry, or out there in the warm wet rain?

St. Matthew’s was a redbrick Victorian school which had been added to, over the years, with an assortment of prefabs and a single-storey extension. Boys and girls in maroon and grey uniforms swarmed over every available inch of playground. Parking the car took some manoeuvring. Adolescents seem to move at two speeds; manic or catatonic. I made liberal use of my horn but half of them seemed to have some sort of death wish. I managed not to fulfil it.

I asked a huddle of boys on the entrance steps the way to the staff room. One of them offered to show me the way. We walked through endless corridors strewn with pupils and adorned with displays of work. En route, I let slip that I wanted to talk to Martin Hobbs’ form teacher. He shrugged his shoulders.

At the staffroom door, I knocked and entered. The room was cramped. Low pvc chairs surrounded coffee tables. At the far end of the room, the smokers sat. Open shelving lined all four walls and papers spilt from every nook and cranny. Piles covered the coffee tables too. I approached the nearest group. Half-a-dozen women eating Pot Noodles, sandwiches and fruit. A couple were marking exercise books at the same time.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Martin Hobbs’ form teacher.’

‘What year’s he in?’ one of the Pot Noodles asked.

‘Fifth, I think. He’s sixteen.’

‘Five Delta – Russ O’Brien – the one with the beard, in the corner.’

‘Thanks.’

Russ O’Brien was a smoker. Pipe. Eyes closed, feet on the table. Stout, hairy. Looked a bit like a mountain climber.

‘Mr O’Brien?’

He opened one eye, realised I wasn’t a pupil and opened the other. Slid his feet from the table and sat up in his chair.

‘Yes?’