The One Safe Place (45 page)

"I'll just take your number again in case. I'll give Head the message that you called the moment I see him."

Some phrases simply didn't translate across the ocean, Susanne thought. The beginning of a grin tweaked her face awry, but it felt as though Marshall had left her his smile, no longer needing it, perhaps. She wouldn't be able to bear twenty minutes of waiting and wondering. She stood up as the phone in her hand went dead, and ran to the study to find a card on the desk, and poked the keys as she hurried downstairs. The distant phone rang as she dropped herself back in her chair, and then it emitted a long protesting breath, and a woman's voice as fierce demanded, "Yes?"

"Iris Pendle?"

"Yes?"

"Susanne Travis."

"Yes?"

"We're supposed to meet for lunch today."

"To discuss my offer for the bookshop, yes. Yes?"

"I'm sorry, but I need to cancel."

"Excuse me, won't you. I was in the bath." This was apparently meant to explain the bookseller's abruptness, because when she spoke again her tone was softer "Have you received another offer, Mrs. Travis?"

"Not since we last spoke, no."

"You do realise the figure I mentioned is open to discussion. That was one of the reasons for meeting."

She was giving Susanne the chance to hold out for a better price, but it seemed entirely irrelevant now. "Got you," Susanne said. "It's just that I can't leave the house, at least, I don't know that I'll be able to by lunchtime. My son, he's twelve, he's missing, and I need to be here until, until..."

She wished her listener would speak, and after a pause Iris Pendle did. "Would you like me to come to you?"

"I mightn't be competent to discuss business. I hope you understand."

"Fully." The bookseller sounded as though she'd heard meanings Susanne hadn't had in mind. "So we're leaving it that..."

"I'll call you as soon as, when all this—I'll call you."

"I plan to be in your vicinity again toward the end of the month."

Susanne couldn't think that far ahead—wasn't afraid to, just couldn't, she told herself. "I'll be in touch," she said, and cleared the phone. She needed to make another call, though had she time before the school rang her back? She'd missed the nine o'clock news, but surely if there had been anything new on it about Marshall she would have been notified first. She found the remote control under her chair and raised television channels rapidly as slides, but any local news was finished. She dropped the control and retrieved the phone, and was searching for the scrap of paper on which she had scribbled the number when the phone went off in her hand.

It creaked in her grip as she jabbed the talk button. "Susanne Travis."

"Bushy Boys, Mrs. Travis. I'll give you Head now."

Susanne felt her mouth start to shape the grin it would wear when she recounted that to Marshall—when he was old enough, when he knew about such things. She composed her face in order to compose her voice as she heard Mr. Harbottle say, "Mrs. Travis."

His tone was more authoritarian than she cared for. "That's right," she said.

"I was told you rang."

"I did." Matching tones with him would get her nowhere, however much of her dislike he was reviving. "I don't suppose Marshall showed up this morning."

"I rather fear that is the case."

"You know he didn't, you mean."

"I believe that is what I said."

"But you wanted to speak to me."

"I can see no objection to that, Mrs. Travis."

"I mean, your secretary told me when I called you wanted to."

"The secretary has instructions to refer all contentious matters to me."

"So you didn't have, you haven't, there haven't been any developments." His tone seemed designed to make her feel like a guilty pupil, and it wasn't helping. "I spoke to all his friends I've met," she said, "but I wanted you to ask if anyone else has seen him since he walked out of the school."

"That has been done, Mrs. Travis. I gather this has now become a matter for the police, and I should like to express the school's—"

"Skip that for the moment. And?"

"Your meaning eludes me, Mrs. Travis."

"For—And what did the other boys say?"

"I very much regret that there appear to have been no sightings of Travis. I think I can fairly claim that my staff and I would be aware if anyone was concealing knowledge of his whereabouts. I take it you have exhausted any possibilities in that area yourself."

Susanne no longer had much sense of what the headmaster was trying to say, nor did it seem worth comprehending. "I don't know where he might have gone," she said, because even the headmaster was somebody to speak to. "I can't imagine what sort of a state he's in to think he can't come home to me. And if it isn't his decision..."

She trailed off rather than consider that, but the headmaster took her silence as a cue. "I can assure you, Mrs. Travis, that at Bushy Road we strive to instill self-discipline in all our pupils."

"That's the best kind, but I don't see the relevance."

"Simply that if you were implying Travis has fallen into bad company, I would suggest you ought to look elsewhere than at this school."

"I wasn't." That was ambiguous, but she was too angry to fix it. "Mr. Harbottle, if you're going to call my son by name I'd appreciate it if you'd call him Marshall. His father and I liked it, and that's why we gave it to him."

"Our policy at Bushy Road is that until boys reach the sixth form—"

"Or if you're going to use last names you might put Mister in front of them. That might give your pupils a bit more self-respect, don't you think? You can't have self-discipline without that, it's always seemed to me. I thought it was criminals who got called by their last names and nothing else."

"I'm sorry if our methods are foreign to you, Mrs. Travis. I'm not aware of any other parent finding them objectionable."

Each of the responses she discarded was angrier than the last, and she tried to restrain herself for Marshall's sake. She hadn't spoken when the headmaster said, "Is there anything further I can do for you?"

"Just help me find Marshall. Don't do anything to scare him off. He's done nothing I blame him for."

"I see."

She wanted to end the call—it might be blocking another—but she couldn't ignore the way he'd said that. "What do you see, Mr. Harbottle?"

"I rather fear our attitudes may prove incompatible in the future."

"You don't want Marshall to come back, you mean."

"That would depend on whether we were given sufficient assurance that Travis would abide by the rules."

"You're presuming I still have a son to come back."

That paused the headmaster, but she desperately wished she hadn't said it. Now that she'd heard it, it seemed far worse than just a thought she had been trying not to think. She was searching for a way to break the funereal silence when he said, "I very much hope that is the case. It seems unlikely that the situation is as grave as you imply."

"You would say that," Susanne started, but there was no point in accusing him of being at least partly responsible for it, not until she took Marshall to see him, which she would, she knew she would. "I can't talk any more now," she said, and steadied her voice. "If you need to call and I'm not here there's a machine. Please leave a message, don't just say you called."

"We would scarcely do that, Mrs. Travis."

The secretary already had, when she'd called the University about Marshall's absence, less than twenty-four hours, which seemed like weeks, ago. Everything which Susanne knew or feared had happened since then gathered itself to rush into her mind. "I can't talk any more now," she said, trying to mean only that she hadn't the time, and pressed the button to clear the line. As soon as she'd done so, the phone rang.

Perhaps she had caused it to ring. She couldn't help hoping that, just so she would have a chance to collect herself, not because she was afraid to hear what someone had to tell her. She let the phone ring once while she firmed her grip on it, twice while she sucked in a breath, and then, suddenly afraid that any caller might assume there was nobody home, she bent a fingernail against the button. "Hello? Hello?" she said. "Hello?"

She heard voices and more than one phone ringing. "Bear with me a moment, sorry," a man said in her ear, then spoke away from her. "I think you'll find Inspector Nadler is on that case."

The street beyond the window blazed and sprang at her as though a bomb had exploded, the one which had been detonated in her brain. "Twelve years old, that's right," the man was saying. "Worst case I've ever seen."

Her surroundings seemed to be retreating from her until they were as distant as his voice, and she had to drag them back. "Hello, police," she made herself say. "Speak to me."

"The way I hear it we're well on the way to tracking down the family responsible," the man was saying, no closer. "I wouldn't like to be them once they're inside for doing that to a kid of his age. Let me know if it looks like there's a connection with that bookshop." His voice was approaching; now it was against her ear. "Mrs. Travis. Sorry to have kept you. Are you still there?"

"Yes. What—" She swallowed and tried again. "What were you—"

"Excuse me?"

"What were you talking about just now?"

"Child porn. Particularly nasty case, not that any of them aren't. Nothing to do with my reason for calling you. Sorry if you thought it had."

Why did he think it might have sounded that way? Why was she being called by someone who dealt with such cases? "Why—"

"Yes, Mrs. Travis?"

"What do you want?"

"I was hoping to be of some help." His already flat voice had grown more brusque; perhaps he'd changed his mind. "We spoke yesterday. Drumm."

"About the videos you took."

"The illegal videos we seized, correct. You were coming in to sign the waiver."

If he hadn't said he mightn't be at the police station this morning she would have recognised him sooner. "Yes," she said, struggling to keep her thoughts on track, "but since then—"

"I'm familiar with your situation, Mrs. Travis."

"You are." Surely she hadn't heard more sympathy in his voice than she was afraid to hear. She flexed her tongue in her dry mouth. "What situation?"

"We've got your son down as a missing person, haven't we? Or have things progressed?"

"That's all. That's all, isn't it, as far as you know? I thought you would, being police."

"I'm with you. No progress that I'm aware of, sorry to say. I was calling because we'll have a car in your district sometime before lunch."

Susanne felt as confused as grateful. "Haven't there been any? Searching already, I mean?"

"Not to look for your son. That's another division. I was going to propose that our men could bring the waiver for you to sign if you'll be at home."

Her appreciation of his thoughtfulness almost rushed her into agreeing, but she held back. "What am I signing away?"

"The seizure, Mrs. Travis. I took it you understood that."

"What, all the videos? Not all of them."

"All the American tapes, and I think it's one British tape that's banned. We'll supply you with a breakdown, of course."

"But some of the tapes we brought over are rated PG. You have that here too. Parental Guidance."

"They don't carry a British certificate, Mrs. Travis. That's the view that's being taken. Under all the circumstances I hope you can see it's more than reasonable."

"What's the alternative?"

The policeman sniffed. "To take the matter to court and use up a good deal of time and public money and manpower."

"Quite a few of those tapes belong to my son. Some of his favourite movies. Please don't think I'm being difficult, but I'd have to ask him if he wants to give them up." Signing away Marshall's possessions might feel like signing him away too. "I'll ask him, all right?" she said.

Another phone rang in the police station, and reminded her that someone else might be trying to reach her. She was about to repeat her question when Drumm said, "As you choose, Mrs. Travis. I don't want to insist, given the situation, but I'd appreciate an answer as soon as you have one."

"That's a deal." Yet another phone began to ring—it felt as though it was somewhere deep in her brain. "Thanks, thanks a lot," she said, and silenced the receiver and held it unsteadily, waiting for it to shrill. Suppose the caller she'd sensed failing to reach her had given up? She stared at the phone in case that would rouse it, and released a shaky sigh, and lowered the receiver onto the carpet. The moment she let go of it, it rang.

She grabbed it, grabbed it again as it skittered away under her fingernails, captured it with both hands and hoisted it to her face, awkwardly thumbing the talk button. "Yes. Hello."

"Mrs. Travis?"

She recognised the man's voice, and the sounds of a police station behind it. The voice was unbearably neutral—guarded, she tried not to think. "Ccc," she said rapidly, desperate to get past the exchange of names, and fought off the first attack of stammering she had ever experienced. "Onstable Askew."

"No, this is Angel."

It wasn't the right voice—she must have attached the wrong name to each of the two policemen yesterday—but it was the call she found she had been dreading. She held onto the receiver with both hands and sat up stiffly, gazing straight ahead. "Constable Angel. Yes."

"I'm calling to let you know we'll pick you up in ten minutes."

"Oh." That sounded more like a cry than she'd wanted it to. "Oh, right. Okay. Thanks," she said, and seemed to have nothing left to say except, "Why?"

"Because we believe we may have located someone who saw your son."

He was going to be all right, Marshall kept telling himself. The pills were starting to work. He would be fine if he could sleep just a little. His eyes were stinging with the lack of sleep, and the light of the room felt like dirty liquid which was being poured into them. He'd tried turning off the light, but the darkness showed him his father's face being smashed, coming to bits as metal heels and toecaps were driven into it, then reappearing whole and waiting helplessly with the same lopsided pleading grin. When his father's head appeared on a carnival sideshow stall at which a crowd was hurling bricks, Marshall crashed into the wall in his haste to find the light switch. The light seemed dimmer than it had been, and whenever he shut his eyes the sight of his father's face being burst asunder was waiting. Maybe once he gave the pills a chance to work they would let him sleep. He wished he could ask Darren, but his friend had gone to bed.