What You Left Behind (24 page)

The man’s eyes flicked to the sky. He squinted again. “Can’t say I did. Although …”

“Yes?” Jo’s gasp of hope was palpable.

“I’m sure Jan said there was a group of lads hanging around the lane last night, down where she walks the dog. She said they were, well, you know … a bit nasty-looking. She felt rather intimidated. I’ll get her to look at your photo.”

Less than a minute later a woman wearing a dressing gown with her hair wrapped up in a towel was studying Freddie’s face. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, he was definitely down the lane last night, about nine-thirty. He was with some other lads, about three or four of them.” She tapped Jo’s phone screen. “I’ve seen him around the village, but I didn’t recognize the others. They were a bit unsavory. I gave ’em a wide berth.”

“Where was he exactly? Did he seem OK? Did he seem sad?” Jo was gabbling. “What were the other boys like? Can you describe them? Where did he go?”

Lorraine placed a hand on Jo’s arm to calm her. “Anything you can tell us will be very useful.” She took out her warrant card and showed it to the woman.

“They looked a bit intimidating, if I’m honest. They were gathered around your lad. At first I thought they were all hanging out together, but then it became clear they were giving him a hard time. They were smoking and had bottles of beer.”

“Can you describe them?” Lorraine said.

The woman sighed and shook her head. “A couple were white but they had their hoods up. Another was black, I think. He was tall and skinny. They made some comment about my dog as I went past. He only has three legs, you see.”

The towel slipped off her head, revealing damp, dark blond hair. It fell onto her shoulders.

“Were they hurting Freddie?” Jo asked in a croaky voice.

“I got the impression there’d been an argument and that by walking past I’d stopped it. They were clustered in a field gateway, the one I usually climb over to take a shortcut to the canal towpath. Midge likes to swim.”

Lorraine tried not to think about the feasibility of a three-legged dog swimming in a canal. “What made you think there’d been an argument?”

“I heard raised voices and yelling as I approached the gateway from round the corner. They were in a tight huddle, your lad in the middle, but when they spotted me they broke up. One of them shoved him.”

Jo let out a little whimper. “Why didn’t you call the police?” she said. “Or help him?”

“What, and have them turn on me? Anyway, I saw your boy again later.” She seemed confident about this. “I was half a mile along the canal, where it runs close to the road, and he was walking along it. He’d got some speed on.”

“Are you sure it was him?” Lorraine asked.

“Yes. He was carrying the same backpack as before. Orange and green. It was bright, that’s why I noticed it.”

Jo was nodding. “Freddie has a pack like that.”

“So he was heading north-ish,” Lorraine noted, although she knew the road forked soon after that, one way leading back toward Radcote, the other toward Wellesbury.

“I suppose he was,” the woman said. She rubbed at her head with the towel. “Look, I got to do my hair. I hope you find him, OK?”

“Yes, of course,” Lorraine said. “And thanks for your help.”

The woman turned and went back inside. Her husband, without them noticing, had already left for the shop.

L
ORRAINE REPORTED THEIR
findings to Adam, who told them he’d not had any joy with his wider search, which made them believe—
hope
—that Freddie was still in the vicinity.

Jo needed to sit down, so they paused at the bus stop. “What if they hurt him?” she said. “They might have followed him and—”

“Jo, don’t let your thoughts run away with you.” Lorraine didn’t know what else to say. Were these boys the bullies who had been harassing Freddie? All she could think of was Freddie’s expressionless face the last time she’d seen him. “Adam’s going to phone the local police now.”

Jo’s face crumpled, and she began to cry openly. “You’ll be involved, won’t you?” she asked Lorraine through her tears. “I want you working on it.”

Lorraine nodded. “Of course,” she said, knowing that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.

T
HE HEAT WAS
really building now as the sun swept higher into the sky above the row of houses lining Back Lane. The forecast of a scorching few days was proving correct.

Lorraine and Jo spoke to the postman, who wobbled to a halt on his bicycle. They soon discovered he knew nothing. They called at six more houses, accosted numerous people on their morning errands, spoke with the village shopkeeper, a lad working at the Old Dog and Fox as he stacked barrels in the pub’s car park, as well as several passersby. Only one was able to help.

“Yes, I saw Freddie. He always gives me a wave and a nod.” The old man’s fond chuckle ended in a tight smoker’s cough. A cigarette smoldered between his fingers. “I was just going in for my pint last night and he was off for a stiff walk. I think he’d just been given a bit of a fright by our Gil.” He laughed again.

“Gil?” Jo said weakly.

“I had to give him a warning, I’m afraid. He was yelling and dancing about, waving his fists at Freddie like a savage. I couldn’t hear what he was saying as I’m a bit deaf these days, but it sounded threatening.”

“Oh dear,” Jo whispered.

“Then Freddie walked off with them things in his ears they all wear nowadays.”

“Earphones,” Lorraine said, and thanked the old man. She wanted to get on, knock on a few more doors before returning to Jo’s house to see if Sonia had come up with anything.

A
DAM HAD ALREADY
called the local police by the time they got back. Sonia hadn’t run into a single person who’d seen Freddie, he told Lorraine, so he’d already sent her home.

“How do you fancy a trip to the Justice Center?” Adam said quietly to Lorraine.

“You read my mind,” she said. Her shoulders felt warm, almost burning, from the heat of the sun. “Did you speak to Burnley?”

Adam nodded. “They’re sending a couple of uniforms out though couldn’t say when. Then I spoke to the great man himself. Just for old times’ sake.”

“I hope you didn’t forget to call him
DI
Burnley,” Lorraine quipped.

She gathered up her bag and keys. They could go in her car and he could fill her in on the way.

L
ORRAINE HAD BECOME
involved with Greg Burnley in 2005. It was just after the weekend of the Lozells riots and she’d been working nonstop for days when her boss dumped the internal investigation on her.

Weeks of work revealed that Burnley had written off a young girl and her family as if they were nothing more than rubbish. She remembered the look on Burnley’s face as he slammed his office door, leaving Lorraine to sort out the mess.

“Botched, sir,” she recalled telling the super after only half a day on the job.

His face had remained blank as he’d instructed her to assemble a team to “un-botch” it.

It had all started with Farida, a fourteen-year-old in the wrong place at the wrong time—a purse full of birthday cash and a shopping trip to the Bullring with her best friend. Her attackers, two nineteen-year-olds, one of whom slipped a blade into the small space between two of Farida’s cat-like ribs to get her money, got off thanks to Burnley’s deliberately inept policing—lost CCTV footage, unfiled witness statements, time-wasting arrests, and lack of what was obvious forensic detail.

In exchange for his calculated blunders, Burnley got the names of the trafficking gang the youths occasionally worked for, while
they walked free with total anonymity and a press blackout. Burnley made sure no one cared about the dead girl. She was small fry by then. He made two dozen arrests, ripped down the UK division of a Europe-wide network that dealt in drugs, young female sex workers, and, more recently, foreign slaves. He got all the glory.

Lorraine worked relentlessly on the case after Farida’s mother came to see her, begging for justice. She spent weeks trawling through files, going over fabricated statements, sifting out the truth, picking apart the nonexistent forensics reporting, the lack of protocol—all of it overseen by Burnley.

“You deserve a fucking medal,” Lorraine had told him as he cleared out his desk. His suspension was routine.

She remembered how he’d stared back at her.

In the end there was no retribution for the girl or her family. Their only compensation was Burnley’s swift and silent transfer to the neighboring force. Not far enough away, as far as Lorraine was concerned.

“J
UST WATCH YOU
don’t make an …” Adam said, as they strode up the steps of the Justice Center. He paused, thinking better of it.

“Watch I don’t make an idiot of myself, you mean?” Lorraine shook her head.

“Burnley mentioned the files you wanted, but Freddie should be our main focus now. All this stuff about someone else being on the bike and that visor, well, don’t read too much into it, Ray. I’ve met Gil now. I wouldn’t give too much weight to his story.”

Lorraine shook her head as they entered the air-conditioned building. If it wasn’t for the worry of Freddie pressing down on her shoulders, she’d have defended Gil and his claims. As things stood, she just wanted to make sure everything was being done to find her nephew.