Lazy Bones (34 page)

Thorne had turned the programme off around the time Jesmond began to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights, blathering about two wrongs not making a right...

'Your superiors might decide to make it your problem,' Chamberlain said.

Thorne smiled. 'Is that what you used to do?'

'Of course. I did "Passing the Buck" seminars at Hendon...' They were sitting at a table in the shade, outside the smal vegetarian caf in the middle of Highgate Woods. It was al a bit organic and right-on for Thorne's taste, but Carol had wanted to eat outside somewhere and it had seemed as good a place as any.

The poncy bread was hideously overpriced, but it was al on expenses...

Carol Chamberlain's cold case had been taken away from her as soon as it had become hot again. She'd had no choice in the matter and was already working hard on something else.

Stil , Thorne knew how much they owed her and considered it the least he could do to keep her up to speed. More than that, he actual y enjoyed their discussions, finding Chamberlain to be an incredibly useful sounding-board. They'd met up or talked on the phone a few times now, since she'd first barged into his office. They gossiped, and bitched and bounced ideas around...

'At least they haven't made the connection with the Foley kil ing,' she said. 'They don't know about Mark and Sarah yet.. 7

Thorne reached across for the paper and flipped it over. He scanned the footbal stories on the back page. 'It's only a matter of time.'

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'It could be good, of course.'

'How?'

'It might be the way to find them.'

'Or frighten them away for good...'

Once coffee was finished and pudding decided against, Chamberlain stood, and began piling up their plates. 'Let's take the long way back to the cars.' She rubbed her stomach. 'Walk some of this off...'

'She was asking for you, Dave...'

Having fetched him from his office, and pointed to the woman in question, Karim left Hol and in the doorway of the Incident Room. Stone appeared silently at Hol and's shoulder, and they stared across

at where Joanne Lesser sat in a chair by the window.

'Mmmm,' Stone groaned. 'Soul food...'

Hol and nodded, turned to him. 'Racist and sexist in two words.

That's bloody good going even for you, Andy...'

'Fuck off.' '

'Blimey, you're on cracking form; mate...'

'Seriously, she's bloody tasty, though. You're a right jammy sod.' Hol and looked at him. 'Wel she's obviously up for it. First she's on the phone, now she's come in to see you personal y...'

Hol and led the way across the Incident Room, Lesser standing eagerly as he and Stone approached. He was sure that what Stone had been suggesting was only in his own, sexual y skewed imagination. Stil , for more than just the obvious reasons, he hoped that Joanne Lesser had something important to say.

Five minutes later, they sat, the three points of a smal triangle, in Hol and and Stone's office. Plastic cups of tea on the edges of desks...

'The dates have been bothering me,' Lesser said.

'The dates of the foster placements?' Hol and began sheafing through the notes on his lap.

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'It's slightly different now, but back then we'd have ceased to monitor a placement once the child had turned sixteen. From then on, they were no longer deemed to be the responsibility of social services...' 'Right.' Hol and was stil searching.

'I double-checked the information on the index cards - you know,

the information that I sent to you - and it doesn't quite make sense.' 'What doesn't?' Stone said.

'The last recorded monitoring date was February 1984. That would have been a home visit, most probably. At least a phone cal ...'

Hol and had found the page he was looking for. He ran his finger down the list, stopped at the date Lesser had mentioned. 'Mr and Mrs Noble'. The Nobles should have been back from their holidays by now. He'd left a message, but they hadn't got back to him...

Lesser leaned forward on her chair, looking from Stone to Hol and as she spoke. 'I checked the children's dates of birth, just to be on the safe side, but there's stil a problem.'

Hol and looked at the dates. He turned the page, looking for sme thing else, and when he'd found it, he saw the anomaly. 'They weren't old enough,' he said. .

Lesser nodded, the blush beginning around her throat. Hol and could almost have blushed himself. This was something he should have seen, would have seen if he'd been giving it the proper attention. He'd been half-arsed, hadn't considered it important enough. He should have let Stone give him a hand when it had been offered. Now, Stone was the one sitting there, probably enjoying every minute of it, as simple, evident

facts were spelt out for Hol and by a member of the public... '19847' Stone said. 'So, the kids would have been...'

'Fifteen and thirteen,' Lesser said. 'Mark was almost sixteen, fair enough. If it had just been him I wouldn't have been concerned, but the little girl was nowhere near old enough for monitoring to stop. You can see why I thought it might be important...'

'What are the reasons you might stop monitoring a case?' Hol and said.

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'There's only two that I can think of. If a family moves away it would be handed over to a different area, or even a completely different county.'

'I'reckon that's it,' Hol and said. He began turning pages again until

he found the current address for the Nobles. 'Romford far enough?' Lesser nodded. 'Doesn't come under us.'

'Does it say how long they've been riving there, though?' Stone asked. 'No, I'l have to check. Last record in any local school is 1984, so there's every chance that's when they moved.' He turned back to Lesser. 'What's the other reason, Joanne? You said one reason was moving...'

'Adoption.' Hol and and Stone both looked back at her blankly. 'Again, things are a bit more rigorous now, but then, once the adoption order had been signed, that was it. Not our responsibility any more.' 'I get the feeling you've already checked this...'

She shrugged. 'I know someone in Adoption� so I gave her a ring. Their records are a bit more organised than ours. Have you got a pen?'

Hol and couldn't help sniling. He stretched across and grabbed a pen from his desk. 'Go ahead...'

'Irene and Roger Noble formal y adopted Mark and Sarah Foley on 12 February, 1984. They may wel have moved shortly after that, but that was certainly the last contact the children had with Essex social services...'

Hol and scribbled down the information. From everything they knew, it seemed that it was the last contact Mark and Sarah Foley had had with anybody.

They walked slowly around the edge of the cricket field towards the children's playground; moving along the path of shadow cast by a line of overhanging oaks and hornbeams. Deep into the school holidays, there were plenty of people around. The temperature was starting to drop as the sky clouded over, but here and there were glimpses of a dark blue, like bruises fading on puffy flesh.

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'Mark Foley stil sounds like a good bet to me.'

'Yeah, I think so too,' Thorne said. 'Just wish I could cash it in.' 'It'l happen. He can't stay hidden for ever.' 'I've stil got a problem with motive, though.'

Chamberlain threw Thorne a look of theatrical surprise. 'I thought you were the type who didn't care about why...'

'Ultimately, it's not my job, is it? But if it's going to help me catch him . . .'

'Go on...'

'I can see the motive for kil ing Alan Franklin...'

'It's about as good as it gets. Franklin caused everything, might just as wel have kil ed his parents. Took him long enough to get revenge, though.'

'I think I can understand the waiting,' Thorne said.

Chamberlain grinned. 'Maybe he's just a lazy sod.'

Thorne thought he was pretty wel qualified to give an opinion on that one. 'I don't think so...'

They came slowly to a halt.

'He was growing up,' Thorne said. 'Letting his body grow strong, letting the hatred grow stronger. Then he waits until Franklin's old, until he feels safe, before he puts an end to it in that car park.' 'Only that isn't an end to it...'

'No, it isn't. It should have been though, shouldn't it? Mark settles

it, gets clean away with it, gets on with his life.'

'Whatever that is...'

'So why the hel does he pop up again now? Why these others? Why

kil Remfry, Welch and Southern?'

'Maybe he enioys it.'

'I'm damn sure he's enjoying it now, but that's not why he started. Not why he started again, I mean. Something else happened...'

'The rape element is crucial though, you've always said that. Maybe he was raped himself.'

'Maybe.' Thorne felt like they were going over old ground. They'd

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considered this back when they thought the kil er might have been an ex-prisoner, looking to settle an old score. It was possible, certainly, but it felt stale to him, and unhelpful.

Chamberlain jumped at a sudden, sharp crack from behind them. Half a dozen boys were messing about in the cricket nets, and for a minute or two, the pair of them stood and watched.

When she final y spoke, Chamberlain had to lean in close to make herself heard over the noise the kids were making.

'Something I remember from a poem at school,' she said. Thorne kept his eye on the action, inclining his head towards her to listen. '"Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies..."'

'What's that from?' Thorne asked as they began walking again. 'One of those anthologies we had to read. I don't know...'

As they reached their cars, parked on the main road, Chamberlain stopped and put a hand on Thorne's arm. 'It's good, knocking ideas around like this, Tom, it's useful. But don't forget that if the answer's there, if it's anywhere, it's in the details. It's in the facts that make up the

pattern of a case.' �

Thorne nodded, opening the doo of the BMW. He knew that there were answers. He knew too that he already had them somewhere, misfiled and, thus far, irretrievable. Lost among the tens of thousands of facts, relevant or otherwise, to the case. The ever-expanding headful of shit that he carried around with him al the time: names and places and dates and snippets of statements; words and numbers and smal gestures; access codes and times of death; the look on a relative's face; the scuff mark on a hotel guest's shoe; the weight of a dead man's liver...

Thorne knew that the answer was buried in there somewhere and it bothered him. Something else bothered him and he thought twice before mentioning it.

'What you were saying about patterns...'

'What?'

'The second and third victims. He changed the pattern of kil ing between Welch and Southern.'

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'Of course he did. Because he presumed that once you'd connected the kil ings, you'd contact the prisons and warn them. He had to do the next one differently.'

'What if he knew, rather than presumed?' Thorne said. 'What if he knew because he's close to the investigation? We always talked about him having access of some kind. Then other stuff came along and the idea got blurred. What if I was wrong to dismiss the idea that the kil er's one of us...?'

When Thorne got back to Becke House, he was directed straight to Brigstocke's office. Hol and was tel ing Brigstocke and Kitson about what Joanne Lesser had said, and his subsequent phone conversation with Mrs Irene Noble. Thorne made Hol and back-pedal, asked him to go over Lesser's visit again until he was up to speed.

'It's interesting that the dates of the adoption and the move look to be so close together,' Brigstocke said.

'It gets a lot more interesting. When I final y got hold of Irene Noble, told her I wanted to talk about Mark and Sarah Foley, the first thing she did was to ask me if we'd found them.'

Thorne looked across at Brigstocke. 'How would she know we were looking?'

'No, sir, that's not what she meant,' Hol and said. He flipped over a page in his notebook, read from it. '"Have you final y found them?" That's what she actual y said. She's talking about twenty years ago.' Hol and looked up and across at Thorne. 'She claims that the kids disappeared back in 1984...'

'Just after the Nobles adopted them,' Thorne said.

'Right.' Brigstocke got up, walked around his desk. 'And around the time they moved away from Colchester.'

Hol and stuck his notebook away and leaned back against a chair. 'Now it gets even better. Mrs Noble reckons that there Was an official investigation at the time. The children were reported as missing, she says. The police spent weeks looking for them...'

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'You've checked?' Brigstocke asked

'It's rubbish. I went back to 1983, just in case she was getting the dates confused, and there's bugger al . No records of any search, no recdrds of missing persons reports. There was nothing national, nothing local. It never happened...'

'What impression did you get when you spoke to her?' Thorne asked.

'She sounded like she meant it. She was upset...'

'Turning it on, d'you reckon?'

'No, I don't think so. Sounded genuine enough...'

'Where's the husband?'

'Roger Noble died in 1990. Heart attack...'

Thorne thought about this for a second or two, then turned to Brigstocke. 'Wel , I reckon we'd better have a word with her then.' Brigstocke nodded. 'Where is she, Dave?'

'She lives in Romford, but she's coming into town tomorrow. Likes

to do her shopping in the West End, she says...' Thorne pul ed a face. 'Oh does she...?' 'I've arranged to meet her at ten-nhirty.'

Brigstocke took off his glasses, pul ed a crumpled tissue from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from the frames. 'Wel done, Dave. You'd better go over al this with DS Karim as soon as you can. He'l need to reassign, issue fresh actions...'

'Sir...' Hol and opened the door and stepped out.

'Yvonne, can you get across this as wel ? We might have a bit more luck finding Mark Foley and his sister, now we know that they changed their names...'