Lazy Bones (35 page)

Kitson, who had said nothing, nodded and took a step towards the door.

'This is looking good, you know?' Brigstocke said. 'Be great to give the Detective Chief Superintendent some positive news...'

Thorne couldn't help himself. 'Tel him I thought he looked smashing on the tel y the other night...'

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Brigstocke clearly couldn't be arsed to pul him on it. 'Right, a pint later to celebrate?'

'Fuck al to celebrate,' Thorne said. Tl be there anyway, though...' 'Vvonne?'

Kitson shook her head. 'Too much to do.' She turned and stepped through the door, barking back at Brigstocke as she walked away towards the Incident Room, 'Got to change a mil ion and one data searches from "Foley" to "Noble"...' Brigstocke looked over at Thorne. 'What's got up her arse?'

'Don't ask me...'

'Maybe you should have a word...'

Thorne's mobile rang. He glanced at the screen and saw who was cal ing. He told Brigstocke he'd check back with him later and stepped out into the corridor, pul ing the door closed behind him. 'Are we stil on for Saturday?' Eve said. 'I hope so.'

'Right. Dinner somewhere and back to your place.' ';

'Sounds good. Fuck, you know what I stil haven't done?'

'Who cares? You've got a sofa, haven't you?' .

He had work to do, professional y and for his other, more personal project. Not that he considered the kil ing to be personal, not in terms of the self.

No, not real y, and not to him anyway.

What he did to those animals in those hotel rooms wasn't actual y about him, or for him. He'd always denied that, when it had come up, and he would continue to deny it. He was happy to do it, more than happy to put the line around their necks and pul , but if it had only

been about him, it wouldn't be happening.

He was just a weapon...

Strangely, he felt that he put more of himself into his day job. More of him had passed into what he did, by the time he'd finished working 295

on something, than it had watching any of those fuckers plead then die. True, paying the mortgage meant being responsible to people, and what he did, even when he did it wel , was rarely of any benefit to him pergonal y, but he always felt part of it afterwards. The work usual y had his fingerprints on it somewhere.

He laughed at that, and carried on working. His job was hotting up suddenly: stuff was coming in and he was real y earning his money. He had less time now to get the other things organised, but actual y there was very little that had to be done, and certainly no need to panic. It was al pretty much sorted.

Bar a few 't's to cross and the odd T to dot, the final kil ing had been arranged.

296

TWENTY-THREE

Thorne looked unconvinced. 'I've never interviewed anybody in the same place I buy my pants.'

'There's a first time for everything,' Hol and said.

They carried the coffees across to where Irene Noble was sitting waiting for them, flanked already - though the place had been open only half an hour or so - by large Marks & Spencer shopping bags. The caf4 was a relatively new addition to the large store on Oxford Street, wedged into a corner of the ladies' clothing section and half fil ed with shoppers who'd obviously made as early a start as Irene Noble.

As Thorne squeezed behind the table next to Hol and, he glanced around at the dozen or so women getting their breath, ready to start again. Scattered around were one or two bored-looking men, grateful for the chance to sit down and not be asked their opinion for a few minutes.

Irene Noble took a smal , plastic container of sweeteners from her bag. She pressed the top, dropped a tiny tablet into tier latt6, and raised her eyebrows at Dave Hol and. 'They probably think I'm your mother,' she said.

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She was pretty wel preserved for a woman who had to be sixty or so, though Thorne thought that she was trying a bit too hard. The hair was a little too blond and brittle, the fire-engine-red lipstick applied a toudh too thickly. To Thorne, it seemed that this stage was probably the one that came right before giving up altogether. Before mentioning your age to strangers, and always wearing an overcoat, and not giving a toss any more...

'Tel us about Mark and Sarah, Mrs Noble.'

She thought for a moment, smiling briefly before taking a sip of coffee. 'Roger used to joke about it and say that we lost them in the move. You know, like a tea-chest going missing.' She saw the reaction on Thorne's face and shook her head. 'It wasn't a nasty joke, it was affectionate. That was just his way. Something to make me laugh if I was crying, you understand? I did a lot of crying after it happened...' 'This was just after you adopted the children?' Hol and said.

'The beginning of 1984. We'd had them four years or so by then. We had a few problems, course we did, but then things got on an even keel.' �

It was clear to Thorne that her 4eoice was affected somewhat. A 'telephone' voice. Thorne remembered that his mother had used to do the same thing. Airs and graces for the benefit of doctors, teachers, policemen...

'There were problems before, weren't there?' Hol and said. 'With the previous sets of foster parents.'

'Right, and they gave up on the children straight away. It was only Roger and I who stuck with it. We knew that it was just something we had to get through. They were very disturbed children and, God only knows, they had every right to be.'

'What sort of problems?' Thorne said.

She paused for a few seconds before answering. 'Behavioural problems. Adjusting, you know? Roger and I thought we'd got it under control. Obviously we were wrong.' She reached for a teaspoon and stared down into her coffee cup as she stirred. 'Behavioural.' She said

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the word again, as if it were a medical term. Thorne glanced sideways at Hol and who gave him a smal shrug in return.

'So you decided to adopt them?' Hol and asked. Mrs Noble nodded. 'How did the kids feel about that?'

'So you decided to adopt them?' Hol and asked. Mrs Noble nodded. 'How did the kids feel about that?'

She looked at Hol and as though he'd asked a very sil y question. 'They'd lost their real parents and been let down by every set of foster parents they'd had since. They were delighted that we were going to be a real family, and so were we. Roger and I had always wanted children. We might have missed out on nappies with those two, but we had plenty of sleepless nights, I can tel you...'

'I can believe it,' Thorne said.

'And plenty after they disappeared. Plenty...'

'How did they disappear?'

She pushed her cup to one side, laid one liver-spotted hand across the other. 'We moved on the Saturday morning and it was the usual chaos, you know? Boxes everywhere and removal men sliding about because there was snow on the ground. We told the kids they coRld sort their own stuff out, so they just got on with it. Shut themselv�s away upstairs...' 'Fighting over who was going to get the biggest room, I suppose?'

She looked quickly up at Thorne. 'No. We'd sorted out their bed

rooms early on, before we moved...'

'What happened?' Thorne said.

'They needed to have their own space, you understand?'

'What happened, Mrs Noble?'

'Nobody heard them go, nobody saw a thing. They crept out like ghosts...'

'When did anybody find out they'd gone?'

'We were al over the place, you can imagine, trying to get everything together. Trying to find the tea bags and the bloody kettle or what have you.' She began to pick at a fingernail. 'It was around dinner time, I think. Can't remember exactly. It was after dark...'

'So what did you think?'

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'We didn't real y think anything at first. They always went out a lot. They were very independent, always off somewhere together. Mark always looked after Sarah, though. He always took care of his sister.'

Thorne glanced sideways at Hol and. 'When were the police cal ed?' Hol and asked.

'The next morning. Obviously we knew there was something wrong when they hadn't come back. When their beds hadn't been slept in...'

Thorne leaned forward. He took one of the fancy Italian biscuits that came with the coffee and broke it in half, asking the question casual y. 'Who cal ed the police?'

There was no hesitation. 'Roger. Wel , actual y, he went down to the station himself. He thought things might get handled faster if he went there personal y, and he was right. He said they got straight on it. Two of them came to the house while I was out searching in the park and round the local streets.'

'Roger told you they came round?'

She nodded. 'They had a look in the kids' bedrooms, you know? Asked al the normal questtons. Took some photos away with them...'

Thorne looked at Hol and. A reminder about getting photos of Mark and Sarah for Brigstocke's digital ageing plan. Hol and picked up on it, nodded and made a note. Thorne popped the rest of the biscuit into his mouth, chewed for a few seconds before speaking again.

'Did the police presume the children had run away right from the start?'

'Wel , that was the problem, wasn't it? Everything was in boxes, al over the show. It was hard to work out straight away if they'd taken anything with them...'

'Eventual y, though,' Thorne said. 'That was what they must have thought.'

'Yes, after a day or two I worked out which clothes were missing. There was some money gone as wel , but it took me a while to realise. I thought maybe I'd mislaid it somewhere in al the moving. Once the police knew about the children, about what they'd been through,

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Roger said they started treating it as a runaway thing more than anything else...'

'What did they do?'

'Very thorough, they were. Up and down the country. Appeals for information, searches at al the stations, that sort of thing. Roger got updates from them al the time. They were taking it very seriously,

Roger said, for the first week or two, anyway.'

'Roger said...'

'That's right. He went down and nagged them every day. Twice a

day, sometimes, demanding to know what they were doing.'

'For the first week or two, you said. After that...?'

'Wel , they told Roger, a chief inspector actual y, told Roger that he was sure the children were safe. They were certain that if, you know, any harm had come to Mark or Sarah, they would have found out. I suppose they meant found a body...'

Thorne saw that the skin below Irene Noble's fingernail had torn and begun to bleed slightly where she'd been picking at it. He watched as she pressed a napkin to her tongue and dabbed at the pinpricks of blood. When she spoke again, it struck him that the telephone voice had gone, and that the Essex accent was coming through strongly. Whether she was unable to keep it up for long or had simply ceased bothering, it was impossible to tel .

'Never having had any of my own,' she said, 'I can't say for sure if I felt anything less because Mark and Sarah weren't mine, weren't my flesh and blood. D'you understand what I'm getting at?' Thorne nodded. 'After the police told Roger they thought the children were safe, it wasn't so bad, you know? We weren't so scared. We just missed them. We got used to missing them eventual y...'

'Did you ever see a police officer?' Thorne said. 'In al the time they were looking for Mark and Sarah, did you yourself ever speak to a police officer?'

Thorne had been expecting a pause, perhaps a paling, but instead he got a smile. After a few seconds it wilted a little, and she seemed 301

suddenly sad. Then, as she spoke, her face fil ed with an affectionate remembrance. .

'Roger wanted to shield me from any of it. He did everything, handled it al . Perhaps it was his way of dealing with what had happened, throwing himself into it like he did, taking the responsibility, but I knew he was trying to protect me. He dealt with al the official side of things. The strain of it, of everything that happened and that school business on top of it, drove my husband to an early grave.'

Thorne blinked, took a breath or two. A suspicion, a sense, began to distil into something more potent. 'What school business was that?' he asked.

'Roger worked over at St Joseph's. It was the school where Mark and Sarah would have gone.' She said it casual y, like the children had done no more than fail an entrance exam. 'It was just part-time, casual work, but he did al the bits and bobs that needed doing around the place. One day this man comes round, one of the parents, hammering on the door. Says his son's been involved in some kind of incident and mentioned Roger's name. Utter rubbish, of course, the man was on something I think, but it real y upset Roger. This'lunatic wouldn't leave it and went to the headmaster. The school was keen to keep it low key, which was right, obviously, since it was so stupid, but Roger wanted to do the right thing. He left quietly in the end, rather than upset the children. That was typical of him. It was scandalous, disgraceful that anybody could even suggest ... There were always kids round here after school and in the

holidays. Always kids in our house...'

'Roger liked children...'

She looked up, her face softening, grateful for Thorne's insight. For his understanding. 'That's right. He would never have admitted it, but I think, deep down, he was always trying to make up for not having Mark and Sarah any more. Being around other kids had been his own way of coping with what happened. Later on, after that unpleasantness, everything started to get on top of him. His heart just packed up in the end...'

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'What was your way of coping, Irene?' Thorne said.

'I just prayed the kids were safe,' she said. 'That wherever Mark and Sarah went after they left us, they were out of harm's way...'

It was that sentence which stayed with Thorne, which he thought about as they struggled out of the West End through traffic, inching around Marble Arch, car and passengers overheating more than slightly.

'It was very convenient for Roger Noble,' Hol and said. 'The kids going missing when they were betceen schools. They vanish from al education records...'