No Place of Safety

Chapter 1: Missing Persons

Chapter 2: The Mother

Chapter 3: The Centre

Chapter 4: Face to Face

Chapter 5: Outside Interest

Chapter 6: Sanctuary

Chapter 7: Closing In

Chapter 8: Violent Ends

Chapter 9: Aftermath

Chapter 10: Casualties

Chapter 11: Bosom of the Family

Chapter 12: Sisters

Chapter 13: Refugees

Chapter 14: Parents and Children

Chapter 15: Employers

Chapter 16: The Final Girlfriend

Chapter 17: Straws in the Wind

Chapter 18: The One Who Cared

Chapter 19: Consequences

Charlie Peace spotted the man he had come to talk to before he even got to number seventeen. It must have been policeman's instinct, or experience of parents whose children have suddenly left home. The man was approaching down the dingy street of terraced houses from the opposite direction. He was in his early fifties, and had a slightly dog-eared look: his shoulders were stooped, his moustache droopy and unkempt, the thin head of hair was uncombed. He was carrying a copy of the
Sun
. He looked the sort of man the world has not been kind to, and one who has not had the drive or personality to carve his own way in spite of it.

Sure enough he turned into number seventeen.

‘Mr Coughlan?'

The man turned and looked at him, his hand still holding the key to open the front door. Charlie waved his ID card close to his eyes, which were bleared. When he had scanned it, the slack face registered surprise.

‘Oh, I didn't expect – '

‘A black copper?' said Charlie genially. ‘Quite a lot of us around these days.'

The face appeared aggrieved.

‘I didn't mean that. You're taking me up all wrong. I meant I didn't expect anyone from the police to come around. Ronnie Withers down at the Railway Arms said the police never bothered with missing teenagers. Said there were too many of them, and there was nothing they could do.'

‘Well, Ronnie Withers was wrong, wasn't he? Do you mind if I come in?'

‘No, mate, come on through.' He let them in through the front door, and led the way down a dim hall into a back room that abutted a kitchen. Yesterday's
Sun
was on the floor beside the easy chair, and yesterday's pots and pans were still on the draining board in the kitchen. The place was thick with dust and with food smells. ‘Haven't had a chance to clean up,' said Mr Coughlan, clearing a place for Charlie by removing the
TV Week
from the other easy chair. ‘The missus has been knocked for six by this, I can tell you. Just can't get over it. She'll be in bed still. Don't need her, do you?'

‘I expect you can tell me what I need to know,' said Charlie, settling into the chair. ‘By the way, your friend Ronnie Withers wasn't entirely wrong.'

‘He's sharp, is Ronnie,' said Arthur Coughlan, with an air of acknowledging a pub guru. Charlie leaned forward in his chair to explain what parents always found it difficult to accept.

‘Normally there's not much that we can do when teenagers take off, and beyond putting them on a register all we can advise parents to do is wait and hope.'

He had put it as tactfully as possible, but Arthur Coughlan looked even more depressed.

‘What's different about Alan, then?' he asked. ‘The fact that he's so young?'

Charlie shook his head.

‘I'm afraid sixteen isn't all that young, Mr Coughlan. There's kids a lot younger than that sleeping rough in Leeds, and hundreds that age under the bridges in London. No, it's the fact that we had two reported disappearances more or less simultaneously from the same school. That is unusual.'

Arthur Coughlan nodded.

‘Is that Katy Bourne? The headmaster asked us about her. His mum and I didn't even know the name, I'm afraid.'

That Charlie had found out already. But the ignorance of parents whose children had left home about even the most mundane aspects of their lives was boundless, in his experience.

‘Were there any signs that Alan had a serious new girlfriend in the weeks before he took off?'

‘Not that we noticed,' said Arthur Coughlan, positively, for him.

‘And you always do get told?'

‘It's always clear. He wouldn't sit down and tell us outright. But Alan isn't like some of the kids these days.'

‘What exactly do you mean?'

‘He has girlfriends. But he isn't the kind who's been sleeping with girls since he was thirteen. That happens, you know. I think it's disgusting. The girls find themselves pregnant before they're anything but children themselves. How can you expect kids to make proper mothers and fathers? Anyway, Alan isn't like that.'

‘I didn't say he was, Mr Coughlan. In any case, even if he is having any kind of relationship with this Katy Bourne, it would be unusual for the two of them to go missing together.'

Arthur Coughlan's expression was obstinate.

‘I don't think they have gone missing together. Like I say, we never heard the name. We know if Alan has a girlfriend. He'll bring her home, and they'll go up to his room and play records, go to a gig. Then after a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, there'll be a tiff, or they'll both just lose interest. Just like we used to do at his age, Mr Peace.'

Charlie was disconcerted by being classed with a fifty-year-old. Perhaps being a policeman had aged him in people's eyes. He smiled a sort of acceptance, however.

‘So for you and your wife, Alan is just a normal teenager?'

‘Alan
is
just a normal teenager. And nicer than most.'

‘How would you describe him? Describe his character?'

This stumped him.

‘He's a nice lad.' Feeling the inadequacy as well as the repetitiousness of this, Mr Coughlan stumbled on. ‘He's quite bright at school – expected to do well in his GCSEs. And he's had no particular advantages, because his mother and I have never had much of an education.' He gestured around him. ‘It's not a bookish household, as you can see, and that usually makes all the difference, they say. He's never been any trouble – well, you can never say that, can you?
Wouldn't be natural. We've had rows, had to lay down the law now and again, but we wouldn't have it any other way, him being a teenager. It's more difficult for them today than it was when I was growing up, with all the nastiness being thrown at them from the television and the newspapers. But Alan's a good lad . . . a good lad.'

He faded into silence. Charlie said gently:

‘You'd had a row just before he left home, hadn't you?'

Arthur Coughlan looked at the floor.

‘Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Just about cleaning up his room . . . The normal.'

Charlie's instinct told him this was a lie. He decided to let it be for the moment, till he knew more of the circumstances. He wanted to keep Coughlan on his side.

‘Was that on the Friday night?'

‘Yes. I don't believe that was why he left home. He was quite normal Saturday breakfast time.'

‘But it was Saturday he took off, wasn't it?'

The man nodded, sadly, uncertainly.

‘Yes . . . I always go and help out at the Railway Arms Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes. I've been unemployed two years and more, you see, and any little bit of money helps. Used to be a warehouseman at Pickerings, till they went bust.'

‘Had your being unemployed caused problems?'

He shook his head emphatically.

‘With Alan? Not so you'd notice.' Then he thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose we did get on each other's nerves in the holidays, but not badly. His mother has a cleaning job with Lloyd's Bank, so she's out early evenings. It's not as though we're all three of us here all the time.'

‘Sorry – I interrupted,' said Charlie. ‘What happened on Saturday?'

‘Well, I went down to the Railway. His mother went to do the weekly shop at Morrisons, then called in at the Railway for her lunch. That's usual. We came back after two, when things quietened down at the pub. Alan wasn't here, but we thought nothing of it. He didn't have to clock in and out.'

‘When did you start worrying?'

‘When he didn't come home for his tea. It was shepherd's pie, his favourite, and he knew that. We rang Darren Sorby, his friend – he hadn't been at theirs. Then we went up to his room.'

He stopped.

‘How much had gone?'

‘Not everything – not by a long chalk,' said Coughlan firmly. ‘That's why I'm sure he means to come home. But all his favourite clothes had gone, quite a few records, some books – including some school books. So I'm sure he intends to go on with school, do his A-levels, like he said he wants.'

Charlie wondered whether he might be clutching at straws. Still, taking books and records did not suggest sleeping rough.

‘Doesn't sound as if he thought he'd be on the streets,' he said, encouragingly. ‘What did he take all this in?'

‘His rucksack. He had a hiking holiday in Northumberland last summer. Was going to take another one this summer.'

‘So he didn't take a case?'

‘No. Well, he wouldn't. A case to a teenager looks sort of elderly, doesn't it?'

‘I suppose so. But somehow it doesn't look as if he expected to stay away for a long time.'

Something in his words aggravated an itching worry in the man's mind.

‘Expected . . . A lot of things can happen that you don't expect, if you're sleeping rough.'

‘We don't know that he's doing that,' said Charlie, urgently. ‘In fact, I'd say it was pretty unlikely. Do you have a recent photograph of him?'

Arthur Coughlan got up and rummaged in a drawer.

‘There's his passport photograph,' he said, handing over a European passport. ‘It's two years old now. We took him to Spain with us. We didn't care for the place, but he enjoyed it. Oh, and there's this.'

He took a colour snapshot in a cheap frame from the wall unit. It showed a teenager in shorts and short-sleeved shirt, rucksack on his back, smiling into the camera – fresh-faced, a lock of hair straggling over his right eye. Charlie thought
it bore out his father's description of him – a nice lad: likeable, responsible.

‘Was this on the walking holiday you mentioned?'