Cry Baby Page 13

  ‘Certain people being his father?’

  ‘I’m his father.’

  ‘Fair enough, but don’t you think the man who believes he’s Kieron’s father might start asking questions now?’

  ‘Maybe. If he finds out.’

  ‘But that wasn’t going to get in the way of you doing the decent thing.’

  Meade shrugged, still fiddling with his earring. ‘Billy Coyne can ask all the questions he likes, can’t he? What’s he going to do, stuck in Whitehill?’

  Thorne nodded, but he knew people like Dean Meade were well aware how easy it would be for Billy Coyne to get others to ask those questions for him. Well aware, too, of just how awkward they might be.

  ‘What kind of car do you drive, Mr Meade?’

  ‘Fiesta Cosworth.’ He nodded up towards the calendar. ‘Doesn’t go quite as fast as that, mind you.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your Fiesta?’

  ‘Blue. It’s dark blue.’ Meade looked concerned suddenly. ‘Look, what’s my car got to do with anything?’

  They would check to see if Meade owned any other vehicles, of course, but Thorne guessed that the car had got the missing boy’s biological father off the hook. All the same, he could not help wondering again about their public-spirited birdwatcher and if they were giving his story too much credence.

  Had Felix Barratt seen anything at all?

  It would certainly suit the guilty party to be regarded as a friendly witness, but then, if Barratt did have something to hide, why hadn’t he confidently picked Figgis out at the ID parade? Why hadn’t he picked anyone? That would have done him a favour, surely.

  Meade opened a drawer and took out a folded and well-read copy of the Sun. ‘Now, here’s the one you should be talking to.’

  ‘We have talked to him,’ Thorne said.

  Meade flattened the newspaper out and stabbed at the picture of Grantleigh Figgis on the front page. ‘State of him.’ He shook his head, disgusted, sat back and loosened his tie again. ‘I mean, you can just see it with some people, can’t you? Like Fred West, or whoever. Like all those sick thoughts have leaked into their faces. Let’s hope this one does us all a favour, same as that piece of shit did.’

  Fred West, who had killed himself in Birmingham prison the year before.

  What had Boyle said yesterday?

  His sort are always the same.

  It was just shy of going-home time and Thorne had almost finished typing up his report on the interview with Dean Meade when Boyle gathered the senior members of the team together. With an index finger working busily at something inside his ear, he announced that, unfortunately, his plan to let the ladies and gentlemen of the press do the surveillance job on Grantleigh Figgis for them would need to be . . . amended.

  ‘Bang goes our new kettle,’ Brigstocke said.

  ‘Didn’t go down too well with the brass, apparently.’ Boyle removed his finger and studied the end of it. ‘Seemed to think it was making us look bad.’

  ‘By which, of course,’ Roth said, ‘they mean making them look bad.’

  It was not often that Thorne had cause to inwardly applaud a decision taken by the powers-that-be. Most of them were closer to being politicians than they were to being coppers, but he guessed that every so often, just statistically, they were bound to get something right.

  Monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare.

  All that.

  ‘So, we do what we can to clear that mob of journalists away from the tower block.’

  Thorne knew that Boyle was choosing his words carefully.

  ‘We all know that some of these journos can be very enterprising when they choose to be, so we might not be able to get rid of every single one. I mean, we haven’t got the manpower, have we?’

  ‘We’ll have a good go at it,’ Roth said.

  ‘That’s all I’m asking for, Ajay. So, I want a team of officers at the entrance, day and night, making sure that the only people who get inside Seacole House are people who should be getting in.’

  ‘You mean the residents?’ Thorne asked.

  ‘Well, obviously.’

  ‘How’s that going to work in practice, though?’ Brigstocke asked.

  ‘There’s probably upwards of three hundred people living in that block,’ Thorne said. ‘What about friends? Family?’

  Others were quick to voice their concerns.

  ‘Will every single resident need to produce ID?’

  ‘Do they have their names ticked off a list or something?’

  Boyle raised a hand until there was silence. ‘Look, I’m not going to draw it all out in crayon for you,’ he said. ‘Obviously, the last thing we want to do is stop people going about their everyday lives and I’m not saying this is going to be a piece of piss. Just . . . we must do what we can to make sure that things in that block get back to normal.’

  Thorne almost laughed.

  How could things ever get back to normal for Catrin Coyne? For the man living next door to her, come to that?

  ‘So that if Mr Figgis chooses to get out and about to take the air, he is free so to do. That’s when the surveillance team start earning their money again.’

  ‘And if he puts a foot wrong,’ Roth said, ‘we’ve got him.’

  Walking out into the car park fifteen minutes later, Brigstocke said, ‘I’m not sure if I fancy Figgis for this or not.’ He veered away from Thorne towards his car. ‘I’m pretty sure he isn’t stupid, though.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Thorne said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The phone sat on the floor next to the sofa, which, barring necessary trips to the kitchen and bathroom, was where Cat now spent almost every waking hour indoors. She grabbed it before it had rung twice, not because she thought it might be news about Kieron, but because she knew it was Billy. Oddly, she almost always knew when it was him calling, but she didn’t usually tell him. He’d just have said she was being daft as usual or taken the piss out of her for being witchy.

  ‘Jesus.’ He laughed, and it was the most wonderful sound Cat had heard in days. ‘You must be sitting on the phone or something.’

  She lifted the phone on to her chest. ‘I need to keep it near, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Just in case.’

  ‘How are you doing, Kit-Cat?’

  It was what everyone asked, in one way or another.

  Sometimes there was a hand laid gently on the arm. Usually a cocked head or a gentle nod and always some kind of sad, awkward smile. The stuff people normally saved up for funerals. Cat wanted to step close to these people and shout in their silly, concerned faces. How the hell do you think I am? But coming from Billy it was different. Especially now, since that chancer Dean had come out of the woodwork. Hearing Billy ask that simple question stopped her breath for a few seconds, and when it came back it brought a strangled sob with it.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t be long. You know how it goes.’

  Cat knew exactly how it went, because Billy had explained, way back when he went inside the first time. Whenever he’d call, there’d always be a line of men behind him waiting for their turn. Men he’d prefer not to fall out with if he could avoid it, even if most of them were rather more worried about upsetting him. All of them wielding phonecards as though they were weapons, which of course, with a little prison handiwork, they could easily be.

  ‘Those few minutes of contact with the outside, that’s what you think about all week,’ Billy had told her back then. ‘You can’t afford to waste them.’ There was simply never time for meaningful silences or drawn-out declarations of longing. It was why he always talked fast whenever he called her, gabbling because he had to, like he was speeding or something.

  But not this time.

  He said, ‘I saw the paper.’

  ‘Yeah, I guessed you would.’

  ‘Everyone saw it,’ he said
. ‘Passing it round, giving me funny looks. One or two of them making offers, you know?’

  Cat asked what he meant, though she knew very well.

  ‘That animal won’t last five minutes once he gets sent down. Not once the word goes out.’

  ‘Will you put the word out?’ She waited. ‘Billy . . . ?’

  Now, there was a meaningful silence. Eventually he said, ‘Do you think it’s him?’

  ‘I thought I would know,’ she said. ‘That I’d be able to see it. I thought that if I ever got the chance to look whoever took Kieron in the eye, I’d know.’

  ‘So?’

  Her mouth was dry and she struggled to swallow. ‘What I do know is that our boy’s still alive.’

  Cat heard laughter in the background, a door clanging, somebody shouting something. Then Billy. A low whisper, like he was pressing his mouth close to the phone. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I always thought that was rubbish,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it with other people who’ve . . . lost kids, whatever. On those documentaries. They always say that, don’t they? That they can feel it, somehow, feel that their child’s still out there somewhere, because of that . . . bond or whatever. How strong it is. But it’s not rubbish, Billy. I know Kieron’s still out there and I know he’s waiting for me to come and get him. Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m awake or not and I can hear him crying. I know it sounds mental, and I swear the first couple of times I thought I’d just been dreaming it was him, or that I’d been the one crying in my sleep. But it isn’t that, I know it’s not. I know it’s him.’

  There was another silence. Ten, fifteen seconds of breathing and sniffing before Billy said, ‘I need to go, Kit-Cat.’

  Cat said, ‘How are you holding up? Is everything . . . ?’

  But there was only noise, then Billy’s raised voice, just a word or two of curses at someone or other, before the line went dead.

  Somebody else’s turn.

  Cat hung up and cradled the phone to her chest for a few minutes. She was as calm suddenly, as light, as she could remember feeling since that terrible morning in the woods. The constant noise in her head, like a low moan just audible below a screaming hiss, had died down a little. It had felt amazing to say those things to a man she loved and trusted. To share her thoughts with someone who, whatever had happened and however things turned out, would never judge her.

  She lifted the handset from its cradle.

  She needed to do it again.

  Anything to keep the noise down . . .

  ‘Oh, babe,’ Angie said, when she answered. ‘I’ll have to be quick, I’m just on my way out the door.’

  ‘Sorry. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Just wanted a natter, that’s all. With everything that’s going on.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Angie’s voice was low, almost a growl. ‘Soon be over, sweetheart.’

  ‘Not until I know where Kieron is.’

  ‘Course,’ Angie said. ‘But even if that fucker doesn’t tell them, sits there and gives it the whole no comment bit or whatever, it’s something, isn’t it? Some comfort, anyway. Knowing they got the man who took him.’

  Thorne was relieved to see that the release of their prime suspect hadn’t made the local news, though he guessed it wouldn’t take them too much longer to cotton on. Instead, two months on from the official announcement that Mad Cow Disease was now killing people, he watched footage of cattle being dumped on to enormous bonfires, while a grim-faced reporter revealed how much the ban on British beef was costing the meat industry and said that as many as two farmers a week were committing suicide.

  He wondered what had happened to that chinless Tory idiot who’d fed his daughter a burger a few years back, to prove just how safe it was. He hoped the daughter was safe and well, but mostly that she’d grown up and come to realise how much of an arsehole her father was.

  He turned off the news and skimmed through highlights of Italy beating Russia at Anfield, then went to the kitchen to grab something to eat in advance of the Turkey v Croatia game.

  Thorne wondered if the mob of journalists had been cleared from outside Seacole House. How Catrin Coyne and her next-door neighbour were coping with it all. He thought about Felix Barratt’s certainty that Kieron had known the man who had led him from the woods and asked himself just how many people the average seven-year-old knew.

  Family members, neighbours, teachers?

  He sat and ate what was left of the meat-feast pizza he’d had delivered the night before and thought about those suicidal farmers and the ways they might have chosen to end it all.

  A roast-beef sandwich would probably have done the job nicely.

  When the game had finished and he’d washed up, he decided to bite the bullet and call Jan back. It was getting late. He was already six tracks into Hank Williams: Moanin’ The Blues, and he thought that she and the lecturer might well have already gone to bed. With a hot milky drink perhaps, or a good book each, or a variety of sex toys.

  He would almost certainly be waking them.

  He marched into the hall to fetch the phone.

  Cat pressed the first six buttons automatically, her finger tracing a pattern of numbers she had dialled countless times. She stopped, poised over the final digit, and stared at her bitten-down fingernail for almost half a minute before letting out the breath she’d been holding and pressing.

  Maria sounded as surprised to be answering the call as Cat was to be making it. She said, ‘Oh, God . . . hello. How are you?’

  That question again. Cat almost laughed, thought about hanging up.

  ‘Sorry. Why do I always ask that ridiculous question?’

  Cat told her exactly how she was. She told her about the crowd of journalists and photographers that had been gathered on the street outside, the reporters who had been calling every ten minutes for most of the day. ‘I’m feeling a bit trapped, to be honest. I could do with a bit of peace.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and stay here?’

  In different circumstances, it would have been the first place Cat would have headed, her chosen refuge. She had stayed with Maria while she was having the flat painted and when Billy and his sister had taken Kieron down to Kent for the weekend. For a few days when she’d been low for no particular reason and had just fancied getting the hell away from Archway.

  ‘I don’t really think—’

  ‘Josh would so love to see you. I’d love to see you. Properly, I mean.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m sure it’ll get easier,’ Cat said. ‘I just need—’

  ‘And having him right next door. I mean, how the hell can the police let you go through that?’

  ‘I told them I’d be all right, that I didn’t feel unsafe.’ Cat had been wondering if she’d done the right thing in saying that to Thorne ever since she’d started slamming the phone down on reporters; swearing at several of them when they’d begun talking about what they’d be prepared to pay for an exclusive interview.

  ‘You don’t get brownie points for being brave, sweetie,’ Maria said. ‘Nobody should have to put up with what you’re going through, with that man so close.’

  ‘Well, they’ve let him go, haven’t they? I mean, officially he hasn’t done anything.’

  Maria hummed her doubt, her disgust. ‘I met him once, when I came over. We got in the lift together. Remember?’

  Cat didn’t.

  ‘I thought even then that he was odd. Out of the ordinary somehow. I wasn’t awfully surprised when I saw the newspaper, put it that way.’

  Despite what she’d said to Thorne when he’d first told her about the arrest, Cat asked herself for the hundredth time how surprised, or otherwise, she’d been.

  She still didn’t like the taste the answer left in her mouth.

  ‘So, how’s tricks with you, anyway?’

  ‘Listen, Cat, you don’t—’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Cat said. ‘I really do. I have to try and kid myself that the world hasn’t
just stopped. For a few minutes, anyway. So . . . ?’

  ‘Well, I’m . . . Josh is still off school.’

  ‘He’s still upset,’ Cat said.

  ‘Yes, but he wasn’t doing awfully well before. He’s not really been himself for a while and I’m still not sure if there’s something going on at school. I’ve asked him if he’s being bullied, but he says not, so I just don’t know. I mean, he says he wants to go back, but I think it’s best if I keep him at home for a while longer.’

  ‘Sound like that’s best,’ Cat said.

  ‘Aside from anything, I’m a little worried about the press myself. Who knows what kind of information they’ve got? I mean, look how easily they got hold of your phone number. I really don’t want them hanging around outside Josh’s school, anything like that.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Maria stopped, but it sounded like the necessary pause she usually left before delivering a particularly juicy morsel of gossip. Cat had heard it a good many times before.

  ‘Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘Well, my ex popped over the other day.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Only because he was concerned about Josh. After he’d seen that first story in the paper. Anyway, I found myself inviting him to stay for dinner.’

  ‘What? Jeff?’

  ‘I know.’ Maria barked out a laugh. ‘Who would have thought? I’ve no idea what it means, but I suppose something like this happens and you just start thinking differently about all sorts of other stuff. Reconsidering all manner of things; looking at yourself.’

  Cat said nothing. Thinking: Counting your blessings, right?

  ‘It changes you,’ Maria said.

  ‘Yeah, it does,’ Cat said.

  Half an hour later, she dragged the thin duvet over herself and thumped the cushions on the sofa into a more comfortable shape. She reached for the remote and flicked through the channels until she found an old Clint Eastwood film she’d seen several times before. The one with the monkey.

  She turned the volume up.

  The walls in the building were paper-thin and Cat had become well used to hearing all sorts, the fucking and the fighting, but some things she could simply not bear to listen to. Not now. What she’d said to Billy was true, but now she was wide awake and knew exactly who was doing the crying.