Fever of the Bone (19 page)

‘And as far as you know, he was at school all day?’

‘When he didn’t come home today as usual, I called the school,’ Kathy said. ‘They told me he hadn’t been in at all today. So I asked about yesterday. And he was in all his classes. I admit, I wondered if he’d sneaked off somewhere with his girlfriend and Will was covering his back. It wouldn’t have been like either of them, you understand? They’re not wild lads. But you wonder, don’t you?’

‘It’s only natural. We’ve all been teenagers,’ Carol said. ‘I certainly didn’t tell my parents all I got up to.’

‘So I checked with Will and with Lucie, his girlfriend. That’s when I found out he wasn’t at Will’s and never had been. Will said Seth had told him yesterday morning that he wanted to take a rain check, he had other plans.’

‘And Will didn’t ask what those other plans might be?’

Kathy’s brows furrowed. ‘Not that he’s telling me. He might be a bit more forthcoming to someone with an official reason for asking, though.’

‘That’s not fair, Kathy,’ Julia protested. ‘You’ve no reason to believe Will hasn’t told you all he knows.’

Kathy rolled her eyes skywards. ‘You’re so trusting. If Seth told him not to say anything, he’s not going to tell me, is he?’

Carol let the moment settle, then said, ‘Have you heard anything from Seth at all since he left yesterday morning? A text? An email? A phone call?’

The two women checked with each other, then both shook their heads. ‘Nothing,’ Kathy said. ‘Not that that’s unusual. He doesn’t usually make contact unless there’s a reason. Like a change in arrangements. Which he didn’t communicate to us this time.’

Kevin cleared his throat. ‘Is his girlfriend at home?’

‘Yes. I spoke to her on the landline at her house,’ Kathy said. ‘The last she saw of him was at lunchtime yesterday. They ate together in the school canteen - they’re in different streams so they didn’t see each other in class. But he didn’t say anything to Lucie about not going to Will’s. She still thought the sleepover was on.’

‘Did he often have a sleepover on a school night?’ Kevin asked.

Kathy looked as if she wanted to slap him. ‘Of course not. We’re not the kind of wishy-washy liberals who let their kids run the game. Last night was out of the usual run of things. Will and Seth are big grunge fans, and one of their favourite bands was doing a live webcast. We said they could hang out together to watch it for a special treat.’ Her breath seemed to stick in her throat and she coughed helplessly. When she recovered, eyes streaming and face suffused with blood, she gasped, ‘Some fucking treat.’

Julia put her arm round her and leaned her head against her arm. ‘It’s OK, Kathy. It’s going to be OK.’

‘Is there anybody else you can think of that he might have gone to visit or gone to meet?’ Carol said.

‘No,’ Kathy said wearily. ‘We’ve already tried his other school friends, but nobody’s seen him since yesterday.’

Carol wondered if there was a tactful way to broach the subject of Seth’s biological parentage and realised there wasn’t. Still, it had to be dealt with. ‘What about his father?’ she asked.

‘He hasn’t got a father,’ Kathy said, weariness tempering what was obviously a source of irritation to her. ‘He’s got two mothers. End of story.’

‘Seth was conceived via AID,’ Julia said, her arm tightening round her partner. ‘Back in the days of anonymous donors. All we know about the donor is that he was five foot eleven inches tall, slim build, with dark hair and blue eyes.’

‘Thanks for clearing that up,’ Carol said with a smile.

‘Is that all they tell you?’ Kevin said. ‘I thought you got a sort of pen portrait. What they did, what their hobbies were, that sort of thing?’

‘It varies from clinic to clinic,’ Julia said. ‘The one we used only gives you the bare minimum.’

‘So there’s no way the father could track down his kid and make contact? Or Seth could track down his father?’ Kevin asked.

‘It’s donor, not father. No, it’s completely anonymised. Not even the clinic knows the name of the donor. Just their code number,’ Julia said. Her patience was clearly thinning.

‘And why would Seth do that? He’s never shown any curiosity about his donor. He’s got two parents he loves and who love him. Which is more than a hell of a lot of kids can say,’ Kathy said, openly belligerent now.

‘We appreciate that. But we do have to explore every possibility. ‘

‘Including homophobia,’ Kathy muttered. To Julia: ‘I told you what it would be like.’ Before Carol could respond, the doorbell pealed out. ‘I’ll get it,’ Kathy said, bounding out of the room. They heard the murmur of voices, then Kathy returned with Stacey Chen in tow. ‘It’s another one of your lot.’

‘DC Chen is our ICT expert. We’d like your permission to examine Seth’s computer,’ Carol said.

‘It’s in his room. I’ll show you,’ Kathy said.

‘I need a word with DCI Jordan first, if you’ll excuse us?’ Stacey said.

As Carol left the room, she heard Kevin’s loyalty kick in. ‘She’s not got a homophobic bone in her body,’ he said. ‘Two of her team, two of her closest colleagues are both lesbians. She chose them, and she trusts them.’

Nice one, Kevin. I bet that cuts absolutely no ice with Kathy. She’ll have Paula and Chris pegged as a right pair of Uncle Toms
. Carol closed the door behind her and raised her eyebrows at Stacey. ‘News?’

‘The wrong sort. Daniel Morrison’s home computer isn’t web-configured. He only uses it for gaming and schoolwork. He’s got a webbook for all his online stuff. And he keeps that in his backpack when he’s out of the house. So we’ve got no electronic starting point.’

‘What about his email address? RigMarole account? Facebook?’

Stacey shrugged. ‘We might be able to backtrack some stuff. But he could have a dozen or more email addresses and web presences we know nothing about. It’s a big blow. There’s only so much I can do with so little.’

‘Any joy with the CCTV?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing after he leaves Bellwether Square. I think he must have left in a vehicle.’

‘OK. Concentrate on Seth for now. Better we try to take care of the living.’
If he is still living, which in the light of Daniel’s death, I seriously doubt
. ‘His mother’s just emailed a recent photo to our address, can you get that out force-wide asap?’

‘I’ll do it right now.’

‘Thanks. Keep me posted,’ Carol said, turning back to the living room, where the atmosphere was no easier than when she’d left. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could show DC Chen where to find Seth’s computer? And we’ll need your formal permission to search it, since he’s a minor.’

‘Do whatever you need to do,’ Julia said as Kathy made for the door. ‘She didn’t mean to insult you, Chief Inspector. She’s just upset, and when she gets upset it comes out as anger.’

Carol smiled. ‘I’m not easily insulted, Ms Viner. All I’m concerned about here is that we do everything we can to bring Seth home.’

Julia visibly drew herself together. ‘When I was driving home. After Kathy called. On the radio. There was something about a murdered teenage boy.’ Her hand flew to her mouth and she bit down on her knuckles.

‘That wasn’t Seth, Ms Viner. We’ve positively identified that boy, and it is definitely not Seth.’

Kathy walked back into the room in time to hear Carol’s words. ‘See, I told you, it couldn’t be Seth.’

‘Always the optimist.’ Julia clung to her arm.

‘We’ll be talking to Will and Lucie, and to Seth’s other friends. And we’ll be putting his photo out on our website and releasing it to the media. This is our number one priority right now,’ Carol said, getting to her feet. ‘Kevin will stay with you. If there’s anything else you can think of that will help us find Seth, tell him. I’ll be on the end of a phone if you need to talk to me.’

Julia Viner looked up at her, eyes pleading. ‘Just bring him home. I don’t care why he’s disappeared or what he’s done. Just bring him home.’

Her words echoed in Carol’s head all the way to the car. There was only so much she could do, but that was all at Julia and Kathy’s disposal. The thing was, thanks to her Bluetooth phone, she could make her phone calls as easily from her car as from her office. And there was another lost boy she owed some answers to. Carol started the engine and headed out of town on the Halifax road.

Sam was not impressed with the moody grandeur of Wastwater. He found the mountains oppressive and the dark waters of the lake depressing. Why anyone would choose to come here for a holiday was beyond him. Walking was all well and good if you were on a Caribbean beach like his sergeant was right now. But the amount of freezing rain they got here must make it more of a misery than a pleasure. And what was there to do in the evenings? Sam loved to dance. He wasn’t picky; it didn’t have to be one particular club or one specific DJ or a distinct style of music. He just loved to feel the rhythm course through him, to lose himself in the beat and to move with an abandon he revealed nowhere else in his life. He wouldn’t mind betting there wasn’t a dance venue within twenty miles of here. Unless it was Morris dancing, which was to dancing what the ploughman’s lunch was to food.

He’d spent most of the day huddled in his car or in the underwater search team’s support vehicle. They weren’t a talkative lot. They’d taken Stacey’s list of co-ordinates and gone into a huddle over a chart, marking sections that he assumed corresponded to the search areas she’d suggested following her consultation with the satellite-imaging experts at Bradfield University. Some had donned wetsuits and strapped tanks of air to their backs then headed for the boat with its fat black inflatable rim. Sam hadn’t the faintest idea how they would go about the search. He’d never had any interest in diving. He couldn’t see the point. If you wanted to watch tropical fish, you could check out a David Attenborough DVD and never have to leave the comfort of your own living room.

The day had dragged wearily on. Divers disappeared under water, spoke incomprehensibly via their radio link to the control team in the support vehicle, surfaced and disappeared again somewhere else. Occasionally, the boat would return to shore and the divers would swap with another team. Sam was almost beginning to regret being so diligent with the Danuta Barnes case.

But then towards the end of the afternoon, everything changed. It was, he thought, the fifth dive. One of the resting divers walked briskly across to his car and made a circle with his thumb and first finger. Sam wound down his window. ‘Looks like we’ve found something, mate,’ the diver said cheerily.

‘What sort of something?’

‘A big bundle, wrapped in plastic. According to our boys, it’s tied to a bag made of what looks like fishing net, filled with rocks.’

Sam grinned. ‘So what happens now?’

‘We’ll rope it, get airbags underneath then winch the lot up. Then we’ll take a look inside.’

The recovery process seemed to take forever. Sam tried to suppress his impatience, but he couldn’t keep still. He walked the shoreline, climbing up a low bluff from where he could get a better view of the boat a few hundred yards away. But he was too far away to see much of what was going on. At last, a black-wrapped lump the size of a Portaloo began to emerge, sluicing water in its wake. ‘Christ, that’s big,’ Sam said aloud, transfixed by the struggles of the dive team to get it on board without capsizing their boat.

The sound of their engine split the hush of the late afternoon and Sam hustled back down to the rough scree of the little beach they’d launched from. The boat nosed right on to the shore but Sam hung back, not wanting to ruin his shoes unnecessarily. It took five of them to manhandle the constantly shrinking bundle from the boat on to dry land, staggering up the beach to lay it down on the grass by the support vehicle. Water still leaked generously from all sides.

‘What now?’ Sam asked.

The dive team leader pointed to one of his men emerging from the support vehicle with a camera. ‘We take photos. Then we cut it open.’

‘You don’t take it to a secure area first?’

‘We don’t take it anywhere until we know what the appropriate destination might be,’ he said patiently. ‘It might be rolls of carpet. Or dead sheep. No point in hauling them off to the mortuary, is there?’

Feeling stupid, Sam just nodded and waited while the officer with the camera took a couple of dozen shots of the oozing package. At last he stepped back and one of the divers took a long knife from a sheath at his waist and slit the package open. As he peeled the plastic back, Sam held his breath.

The remaining water flowed away. Inside the black plastic, three packages were sheathed in polythene turned opaque by time and water, bound with duct tape.

Sam had been expecting Danuta Barnes and five-month-old Lynette. This was clearly more than he’d bargained for.

While Tony might not have appreciated Carol’s characterisation of him as a lost boy, it wasn’t so far off the mark. In the hour since Alvin Ambrose had delivered his hard-won bundle of papers, Tony had barely been able to string two thoughts together. The couple in the next room had concluded their blazing row with equally blazing sex. Through the other wall someone was listening to some sort of motorsport that involved throaty engines and squealing tyres. It was intolerable.

It almost made him believe in fate.

Except that he knew deep down that if it hadn’t been the noise, it would have been something else. After all, there was plenty to choose from. The poor lighting. The hardness of the bed. The chair that was the wrong height for the desktop. Any one of them would have justified the decision he was about to make. The decision he had, if he was honest with himself, made that afternoon when, as soon as he’d freed himself from the estate agent, he’d paid a visit to a firm of solicitors whose office was also within easy walking distance of the hotel.

Tony picked up the papers and slipped them into his still-packed bag. He didn’t actually check out. That could wait till morning. He got into his car and retraced the route he’d driven earlier, only making a couple of mistaken turns along the way. Hell, there were days when he made more errors than that between Bradfield Moor Secure Hospital and his own front door.