Little Face (10 page)

I'm not a fighter, not by nature. I've never thought of myself as
strong; at times I've been downright weak. But I am a mother now. I
have Florence to think of as well of myself. Instead of myself. Giving
up isn't an option.

Friday, October 3, 2003, 2 PM

TEN MINUTES AFTER the conclusion of his interview with Proust and
Simon was back in the canteen. The one-armed bandit machine was
mercifully, unusually silent, as if out of respect for the gravity of his
mood. The inspector had treated his hypothesis with contempt, called
him paranoid and ordered him to go and get his head together. `I don't
want you working in this state. You'll only make an irritation of
yourself and ruin everything,' he'd said-Proust's equivalent of compassionate leave.

What was wrong with everybody today? Why couldn't they see
what seemed to Simon to be glaringly obvious? Was it because Proust
and Charlie had both been involved in putting Darryl Beer away? Was
that why they were so keen to cast Simon as the unstable eccentric who
let his personal agenda get in the way of the facts? Meanwhile, the possible personal agenda of David Fancourt was ignored by all. First wife
dead, second wife missing. Fact.

Simon got himself a cup of tea and fantasised about beating the
truth out of Fancourt. Some things were worth doing time for. What
had the bastard done to Alice? What had he told Proust about Simon?
It had to be him who'd said something, not Charlie. These questions
were a torment that brought Simon no closer to any sort of answer. He
heard a cough behind him and turned.

`Proust said I'd find you here. I've just spoken to him. Correction: I've just listened to him. At length. He's not happy with you, not happy
at all.'

`Charlie!' Seeing her made him feel that perhaps there was hope, perhaps doom could be warded off for a while longer. `Did you manage
to calm him down? You're the only one who can.'

`Don't put me in a foul mood again straight away,' she said grimly,
sitting down opposite him. It was impossible for Simon to give Charlie a compliment without her getting cross. There was only one sort of
compliment she wanted, one that Simon couldn't give her. She seemed
determined to dismiss all lesser endorsements from him as pity or charity. Sometimes he wondered how she could even look at him. How
could she see him as anything but pathetic after Sellers' fortieth birthday party last year? Simon pushed the horrific memory away, as he did
whenever it rose to the surface.

`What did The Snowman say?' he asked.

`That you were babbling like a fool. He thinks you've got a thing
about Alice Fancourt. Her husband thinks so too. Anyone with eyes
and a brain can spot it a mile off. You get that slobbering idiot look on
your face when you talk about her.'

Her words stung. Simon didn't bother to argue.

`He also says you denied that any inappropriate behaviour had
taken place.'

`Does he believe me?'

`I very much doubt it. So you'd better make damn sure he never
finds out, if you're lying. Anyway, my instructions are to treat mother
and baby's disappearance as a misper if they don't turn up within
twenty-four hours.'

Simon's eyes widened. `You? Does that mean ...

'Proust's assigned it to me, yes. To our team. Because of our extensive experience of the Fancourt family,' she added sarcastically.

`I thought there was no way he'd let me near this one. Thank you!'
Simon cast his eyes towards the ceiling's buzzing strip-lights. He
believed strongly in something unspecific. His mother had always hoped he would become a priest. Maybe she still did. Simon had
inherited her need to cling to something, but not her conviction that
God was that thing. He hated the idea that he had anything in common with his mother.

'Proust's full of surprises, I'll give him that,' said Charlie. `He told
me he thinks you might get a result simply because you care so much.
He reckons you want to find Alice Fancourt a fuck of a lot more than
anyone else round here does.' Her tone suggested she was part of the
anyone else.

Simon put his head in his hands. `If I get the chance to start looking.'
He groaned. `Charlie, this business could really fuck me up. I've met
Alice twice, unofficially. She ... she told me things that I'm going to
have to come clean about, once the investigation starts. You know I
don't deserve to lose my job, you know how good I am. . .

`As do you,' she said flatly, raising an eyebrow. `How could I forget?
Without you, we'd all be scratching our ears and picking our teeth,
incapable of closing a single case.'

`Yeah, well. When you're as shit as I am at most things, it's hard to
miss when, surprise fucking surprise, you find you can actually do
something well. And this-being a detective-is something I do well.'

`Oh,
really?
So
how
come
you
never
mention
it?
You
should
have
said.'

`Fuck off!'

Charlie laughed. `Only you could boast outrageously and sound like
a victim at the same time.'

And only you could patronise me in that particular fond, proprietorial, sneery way that makes me want to give you a good hard slap,
thought Simon. He said, `I know I've got no right to ask you but ...
any ideas about how I get myself out of this mess?'

Charlie looked unsurprised. She shook a set of car keys in front of
his face. `Come on.'

`Where?'

`Somewhere we can't be overheard.' The canteen was a breeding ground for gossip. They pushed their way through the tables, chairs
and loud graphic jokes and headed out of the building.

Charlie drove like a man, steering with two fingers, or sometimes
with her wrist, ignoring speed limits, swearing at other drivers. They
left Spilling on the Silsford road, with Radio Two blaring. Simon
only ever listened to Radio Four by choice, but had long ago given up
trying to persuade Charlie to compromise. Radio One in the morning,
Radio Two from one o'clock onwards, that was her rule. Which
meant Steve Wright in the afternoon, factoids, songs that should only
be played in lifts or hotel lobbies, everything bland that Simon hated.

He focused instead on the flat, orderly landscape that was passing
too quickly. Normally he found it calming but today it looked empty.
It was missing something. Simon realised with a rush of embarrassment
that he was hoping to see Alice. Every face, every figure he saw that
wasn't hers was a disappointment. Desperate panic had given way to
a sort of mournful wallowing.

What was it that he had seen in Alice that seemed to speak to
something similar in him? She was pretty, but Simon's feelings for her
had nothing to do with the way she looked. It was something in her
manner, a hint of unease, a sense that she was not in her element, that
she was negotiating unseen obstacles. It was how Simon felt all the
time. Some people knew how to glide effortlessly through life. He didn't, and he guessed Alice didn't either. She was too sensitive, too complicated. Though he'd only seen her in a state of extreme distress. He
had no idea what she was like before last week.

Charlie would call him a fantasist, inventing Alice's character on the
basis of so little evidence. But weren't all perceptions of other people
based on such inventions? Wasn't it crazy to assume that one's family,
friends and acquaintances added up to coherent wholes whose natures
could be summarised and fixed? Most of the time Simon felt more like
a collection of random behaviours, each driven by an insane, anarchic
compulsion he didn't entirely understand.

He shook his head when he heard Sheryl Crow's mediocre voice. Typical. Charlie sang along: something about days being winding
roads. Simon thought it was bollocks.

Charlie slammed on the brakes just before they got to the Red
Lion pub, about five miles from town, and swan-necked into its car
park. `I'm not in the mood,' said Simon, his stomach protesting at the
prospect of alcohol.

`Don't worry, we're not going in. I just didn't want to give you this
anywhere near the station.' She rummaged in her large black suede
handbag and produced a standard issue police pocket book, the sort
that every officer carried. Every incident of every shift, significant or
insignificant, had to be recorded, along with details of the weather and
the conditions on the roads. Simon had his in his inside jacket pocket.

Charlie threw the book into his lap. It was brown, seven inches by
five, and, like all pocket books, had an issue number on the cover next
to a sergeant's signature, in this case Charlie's.

`Are you saying what I think you're saying?'

`It's your only option, isn't it? Make your unofficial meetings with
Alice Fancourt official. Your chance to rewrite history.'

`You shouldn't have to lie for me.' He was pissed off that she'd had
the book ready and waiting. She'd known he'd come running to her for
help sooner or later. Embarrassingly predictable.

`Yeah, well.' Charlie grimaced. `It's still a risk. If anyone looks too
closely at the serial numbers ... It goes without saying that if you get
rumbled, you didn't get that book from me.'

`I'll have to write everything out again.' Simon closed his eyes,
tired by the mere thought of the effort involved.

`You're not the first and you won't be the last. Look, I'm not
thrilled about this, but I can't bear to stand back and watch you fuck
up your entire life. I'm too much of a control freak. And ... you're the
cleverest, most inspired and inspiring person I've ever worked withand don't agree with me or I'll bloody strangle you-and it'd be a
tragedy if this one fuck-up ruined everything. If anyone asks, I'll say
I knew about the meetings and gave you the go-ahead.'

Her careful deliberate compliments made Simon feel belittled. She
was incapable of treating him as an equal, and he was pretty sure it
wasn't just because she was a sergeant. He wondered what precisely it
would take to satisfy him. `That won't work, will it? Doesn't everyone
know you were all for cuffing the swapped baby allegation? Why
would you authorise me to conduct further interviews?'

Charlie shrugged. `I pride myself on my thorough approach,' she
said drily.

They sat in silence for a while, watching people enter and leave the
pub.

`I'm sorry,' said Simon eventually. `I shouldn't have lied to you. I
hated it. But you never believed Alice's story. You thought she was
wasting our time. That's why I didn't tell you. I was worried about her
and ... look, I'm not saying I believed her about the baby, but ... well,
I felt I couldn't just abandon her.'

Charlie's face twitched, tightened. Simon regretted his use of the
word `abandon'. They were talking about work, a clash of his professional judgement and hers, but that didn't change the fact that
he'd lied to Charlie, that his lie had involved another woman.

`I take it that, in your eyes at least, I'm not a suspect.'

`A fool, yes. A suspect, no. They say it's blind, though, don't they?'
Charlie looked out of the car window so that he couldn't see her face.
`We'd better shift our arses, much as I'm enjoying this romantic interlude,' she said. Again, Simon pushed the image of himself and Charlie at Sellers' fortieth birthday party out of his mind. He closed his eyes,
craving unconsciousness. Today was proving to be more than he
could handle. He tried to banish all thoughts from his head.

Immediately, something clicked inside his brain. He had it. He
knew what it was that had been stuck like a piece of grit in his mind's
eye. `The night Laura Cryer was killed,' he began. `When Beer tried to
mug her ... ?'

`Not that again.'

`She was alone, right? You said she went back to the car alone.'

Charlie turned to face him. `Yes.' She frowned. `Why?'

`She didn't have her son Felix with her?'

`No.'

`He was at The Elms that night with his grandmother, because
Cryer was working late,' Simon persisted.

`Yeah? So?' Impatience crept into Charlie's voice.

`Why didn't she pick up her son and take him home? He lived with
her, presumably?'

A flicker of uncertainty passed across Charlie's face. `Well, because
... because he was staying over at his gran's house, maybe.'

`In that case,' said Simon, `why did Laura Cryer go to The Elms at
all that night?'