The Pure in Heart (13 page)

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘If they haven’t found him, they don’t know he hasn’t been murdered and thrown down a pit, do they? Have they looked in all the pits in the world yet?’

‘Hot chocolate?’

‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘You’re OK here … it won’t take a minute.’

‘If you go downstairs I want to come
with you.’

‘OK … come on.’

How many small children in Lafferton have crept into their parents’ beds? How many are having
nightmares about David Angus? How many other little bullying sods like Nat are frightening the lives out of the rest with stupid stories …?

Sam sat on the sofa, his eyes bleary as she set the pan of milk on the heat. ‘Why did he go with the man?’

‘What man?’

‘The man who
murdered him. Everybody knows not to go with a man who might murder you, everybody knows that.’

Dear God, how do I answer this child? How do I begin to reassure him and convince him that he is safe when I am terrified for his safety myself and there is no reassurance and will not be unless David is somehow found alive?

She poured the milk on to the chocolate and whisked it round.

‘Can I have
a biscuit?’

‘If you clean your teeth again afterwards.’

‘I’m too tired.’

‘Then no. Come on, big boy.’

The crash from outside was so sudden it made Sam hurl himself off the sofa and on to Cat and the mug of chocolate cascade on to the floor. The wind had lifted up something loose and hurled it down again.

‘Mummy, I don’t like it.’

‘It’s OK, darling, it’s fine, it’s just the wind catching
a bin lid or something … don’t panic.’

‘The man might be there, the one who murdered David Angus, Nat said he was a man who likes to
steal boys and murder them and then he throws them into pits, there are a lot of men who do it, probably even two hundred men and …’

‘Sam … come here, sit on the sofa.’ She pulled him close to her. ‘I want you to listen to me carefully. I am telling you that there
is no man like that out there. That was the wind. There is no man wanting to take little boys. You are perfectly safe and nothing is going to happen to you. Now, I want you to tell me that you have heard me and you believe me.’

‘But you don’t know, how do you know?’

‘I know because I know a lot of things … a lot more things than Nat will ever know. Do you believe him more than me?’

‘I don’t
know.’

‘If so you shouldn’t. He’s a silly little boy and I am your mummy.’

‘And a doctor.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well …’

‘Oh Sammo … I love you. Do you want me to make some more hot choc? And I’d better wipe that up from the floor before someone slips on it.’

Sam slithered off the sofa. ‘There isn’t any left to slip on,’ he said, his face bright with glee. Cat looked down at Mephisto, licking up the last
of the spilled hot chocolate in an efficient manner.

‘Will you swear?’

‘Probably.’

‘What will you say?’

‘It’ll be secret swear. I can hear Daddy’s car. If he finds us up,
he’s
going to swear … go on, scoot.’

What do we do? Cat said fiercely to God as she waited for Chris to come in. What on earth can we do or say now?

He took Geoff Prince because Geoff was taciturn, so much so that he seemed to lack much interest in the job at all. But he was dogged, and good at detail. He didn’t chat and never made stupid judgements.

The Dulcie estate by night was slightly more attractive than in daylight because even the sodium street lights managed to soften the concrete and blur the ugliness of the whole. In
all other respects, though, it was not a place around which to walk after dark and so nobody did. The teenage thugs and junkies had it to themselves.

It was the smell as they got out of the car. Night after night Nathan had leaned out of his bedroom window smelling the smell – chips, oil, human detritus; nowhere else smelled like the Dulcie. He remembered the longing, like a sickness, to get
out, to do anything to escape into a better place, a world that smelled fresher and cleaner and more prosperous – though it had never been money that had motivated him. Nathan Coates had known by the age of thirteen that if you wanted easy money you stuck around the Dulcie. It had never been that.

Maud Morrison Walk was on the other side of Long Avenue from where his family lived – the slightly
more respectable side. The houses here had front gardens and gates, and not so many abandoned rusting cars and old greyhound cages in the front.

‘Here we go.’

Geoff said nothing.

The curtains were cherry red and tightly drawn. There was a rim of light thin as a wire showing round the side and flickering neon blue from a television screen.

‘What the hell’s all this?’

Geoff flashed his torch.
The front garden was decorated not with plants, nor with ancient bicycles and prams, but with hubcaps … several dozen hubcaps, arranged carefully against the fence and along the wall as if they were exhibits.

‘Must grow ’em,’ Geoff said.

The front door bell played ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

‘Brent Parker? I’m DS Nathan Coates, this is DC Geoff Prince.’

‘You took your time.’

Brent Parker held open
the door.

It was a smell again, though nothing like one he had ever smelled before and it choked him. Nathan stood in the doorway of the small, hot, frowsty sitting room and tried to locate it, to make it out. There was a three-bar electric heater full on, a television blaring, a huge neon tank of fish set against the wall.

And the smell.

‘Would you mind turning that off please, sir?’

Parker
ambled towards the television set.

He was a huge man, huge-bellied, huge-headed, with a black ponytail, hands like plates, fingers like bunches of bananas. Nathan looked into his face. The eyes were small, hidden behind deep lids and in folds of flesh, and the flesh was soft and pendulous beneath them.

‘I almost came in. Get it over with.’

‘To the station?’

Parker sat down but did not suggest
that they followed suit.

‘Well, you was always going to come here, wasn’t you?’

‘Were we?’

‘Course. Kid goes missing. I take it you ent found him?’

‘Why did you expect us to come here?’

‘Don’t mess me about, son, I been messed about enough. Kid goes missing, I’ve a record for kids. Stands to reason.’

‘Where were you on Tuesday morning, Mr Parker, around eight o’clock?’

‘In bed.’

‘Alone?’

‘Who’d have me?’

‘Anyone else in the house?’

‘Only Tyson.’

‘Your dog.’

‘Nope.’

‘Don’t mess
me
about, Mr Parker. I don’t go for it.’

‘I know who you are. Dinky Coates’s lad … snotty little kid, you were.’

‘Was anyone else here who can vouch for you being in bed at that time on Tuesday morning?’

‘Ask Tyson.’

Nathan followed the man’s sausage finger. On the other side of the room, above
a shiny sideboard, stood another tank, letting off a strong glow from inside.

The smell.

Geoff Prince went over and peered in.

‘You got a licence for this python?’

‘Don’t need no licence.’

‘Think you’re doing it a favour, do you, keeping it crammed into there?’

‘Want me to let him out and run around?’

‘Do you have a car?’

‘On and off.’

‘I don’t suppose you drive a Jaguar XKV?’

Parker
snorted with laughter and the snort sent spittle shooting out of his mouth towards Nathan. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Have you ever seen this boy?’

‘Don’t bother, I seen the posters, I know what he looks like.’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Might have. Might not. Could have passed him in the street any day. So could you.’

‘Listen –’

‘No,
you
fuckin’ listen, Coates. You listen. I know what I done and I been
inside for it and I done the programme for it and I’m out, finished, paid for, only you lot can’t bleedin’ forget it … I know where I am, I’m on your fuckin’ register, that’s where, and there I’ll be till I’m frying in the Parkside Crem incinerator, but I ent seen that kid, I ent taken the kid, I ent been down that road, I don’t intend goin’ down that road, I don’t intend gettin’ near any fuckin’
kid ever again. If you want to know, I’ve joined a marriage agency, get myself a woman, homekeeper, to look after me and Tyson, shut you up. Go on, get out. Fuck off, before I lift the lid off of his tank.’

Parker stood in the hallway with his back to the open kitchen door. Through a gap, Nathan caught sight of another illuminated tank on top of the fridge, glowing red. Parker smelled too, rank
in their nostrils as they passed unavoidably close to him on their way out. For a second, he grabbed Nathan’s sleeve.

‘You ent checked your records careful enough, have you, you stuck-up young sod?’

Nathan pulled his arm away. ‘If you’ve anything to tell us, Parker, you better spit it out.’

Geoff Prince was halfway to the car.

‘You wouldn’t have wasted your time.’

‘I said –’

‘I heard you.
See, it’s all done with now, I’m treated, en I, cured, went through a load of them psychiatrists and they sorted it, only you’d know if
you’d looked weren’t no point in coming here talking to me. It was
girls
. Always. I never took a look at no boys. It was girls. Always. You take a look. I could have you for harassment.’

Geoff was silent as he drove back to the station.

‘I feel like I need a
shower and to have me clothes sent to the cleaner’s,’ Nathan said after a while. ‘Are people allowed to keep pythons just like that?’

‘Dunno. Want a check?’

‘Naw, got enough on. Just hope he doesn’t forget to put the top back on the tank one day.’

‘It’s not him. No way.’

Nathan agreed, but said nothing. The smell and aura of nastiness had hung about Brent Parker and his hot, stinking rooms,
but not because he had had anything to do with the disappearance of David Angus. The DCI had wanted him brought in if there had been the slightest suspicion, but there hadn’t been, not about the boy at least. ‘They’ll have checked on the stolen Jag time we get back.’

‘You reckon anything to that?’

‘Might be.’

‘Bit obvious … crawling down the road and back in broad daylight sussing out the scene.’

‘Right.’

‘I reckon it was just someone looking for a house. Those bloody great detached places behind their hedges and driveways and posh gates never have anything so obvious as a number, even a name,
where you can find it. I know, I did a house-to-house all round there. Never a bloody sign.’

‘Right.’

‘They do a nice hot pork bap out of Toni’s van.’

‘Go on then.’

Brent Parker’s house was
in Nathan’s mind. He was walking round the rooms, looking at everything, trying to remember what it was that had started to niggle. Something. He had seen something, not enough to pay attention, maybe not seen it properly, but something.

He took the hot roll in its cone of greaseproof paper from Geoff’s hand and the smell made him realise how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten more than a couple
of chocolate biscuits for hours. He bit deep into the savoury, crumbly mass of meat and bread and hot sage stuffing, closing his eyes. But even while he was eating with such ravenous pleasure, it was there, niggling away. Something. Something.

I don’t like this place.

I’m not frightened.

I don’t like it, that’s all.

Why have we got to be here? It’s cold and it smells.

I’m very thirsty actually. If you gave me something to drink it might be best. We’re always allowed to have a drink at school when we want, water anyway, and not anything to eat but we can have a drink when we like. It’s important for people to drink, they get
ill if they don’t drink.

Aren’t you thirsty?

If I could have a drink then I’d tell them when they come that you gave it to me, and that would be a good thing for you.

They will come.

Yes they will.

They’re clever and they have tracking devices and they’ll soon use those to find me and then they’ll come. QED.

Don’t you know what QED is?

When will we go back?

I don’t like it here.

I’d like
to see my mummy. It’s dark, isn’t it, so that means Daddy will be home and then they’ll come for me together. They might bring my sister. They probably would bring my sister.

My sister is eleven and she’ll soon be twelve so they would bring her. Yes, they definitely would bring her.

I don’t like it here very much.

Why don’t you say anything? If you said your name I’d like it better being with
you. I don’t really like it but I’d like it just a bit.

If you said your name.

Di Ronco’s father was a famous pop star. He was in a world-famous rock band.

He’s ace.

Di Ronco’s dad.

He makes us laugh.

Once we wet ourselves with laughing.

I don’t really like it here.

But they will be coming. I think I can hear them actually. I can hear a car coming.

Did you hear that car?

‘I think,’ Marilyn Angus said, taking off her glasses, ‘I am going mad. I think if this goes on for another five minutes, I shall be mad.’

They had tried doing normal things. They should be as normal as possible, if only for Lucy’s sake, though there was nothing normal about Lucy, as she sat as close as she could to one or other of her parents while trying to pretend she was not doing
so, and bit the fingernails she had taken such care in growing down to the quick.

They had tried cooking supper and eating it and most of it lay congealing in the bin. They had tried answering emails, and watching television and playing Scrabble and Racing Demon.

‘What are we doing this for? We never do this. We only do this at Christmas.’ Lucy had got up and walked away, leaving the words frozen
in mid-game on the board.

They had switched on the television and heard the terrible canned laughter like demonic cackling in their ears and turned it off.