The Pure in Heart (28 page)

The Jag was being driven carefully and not fast. The driver took the sharp bends well into the centre of the road and with caution, as if anxious not to risk any damage to the car body from overhanging branches or the verge. One careful owner,
Simon thought, making his sedate way home. If it had not been getting on for three o’clock in the morning he would probably not have followed. The station had already confirmed that the number was different from the car that had cruised Sorrel Drive.

They were heading towards Dunston. Simon doused his main beam and drove on sidelights, not wanting to draw the attention of the driver ahead. There
was no sign of a patrol car behind him. If the Jaguar turned in to one of the driveways in Dunston, he would make a note of the house and call uniform off.

A moment later he remembered the disused airfield, its concrete runways broken and sprouting weeds, the sides littered with old hangars. Whoever owned it did not want it, but was not prepared to clean it up or let it go. It had long been a
blot on the landscape about which neither the council nor anyone else seemed to be able to do anything.

The Jaguar continued for another mile. Simon had to drop to just over thirty to keep well behind. He switched his radio on and told the patrol to move. If the car was going to a deserted area full of old hangars, he might need back-up urgently.

The Jaguar was slowing right down, and turning
left on to the track leading to the airfield.

Simon doused his sidelights, waited until it was well ahead, and then followed again, weaving in and out of potholes and crunching on shards of broken concrete. His heart was thumping and he was conscious that he was alone. He called in again, gave his new location again. The voice from the station was steady, professional. Reassuring.

‘I need urgent
back-up, repeat, urgent back-up.’

‘Understood. Back-up on way.’

The Jaguar was moving towards the far side of the airfield. There were no other cars, no signs of movement or activity of any kind, so far as Simon could see. He pulled up beside the gateway, hoping it would shelter him from sight, unless the Jaguar drove back close to him with headlights on. He watched as the car slipped along
the broken-down rear fence, reached the end, and then swung right, and back towards the hangars. Was he looking for someone else? Checking that the coast was clear? It was difficult to see what was happening so far off and in the dark.

The Jag edged towards the hangar furthest away from view, and went out of sight. Simon got out but did not close his car door. In wide open spaces at
night the
tiniest sound carried. He heard nothing. There were no lights anywhere. He waited.

The moment the patrol car turned into the gateway and headed up the track, Simon saw the moving figure at the other side of the field. He jumped from his hiding place, shouting. The patrol slowed.

‘Put your main beam on, there – see him? He’s running. Move.’ Simon leapt into the back as the police car shot forward.

The man stood no chance. He zigzagged, turned and tried to hide behind the hangars, but it took them a few seconds to reach him. The uniform first in line had the man on the ground.

‘OK, OK, no need to smash my head in.’

‘Take it easy,’ Serrailler said. The PC was shining his torch as he let go and the man scrambled to his feet.

Simon reached for his ID. ‘I’m DCI Serrailler. I’ve been following
you since we left the bypass. I’d like a word please.’

‘What am I supposed to have bloody done?’

‘If you’ll walk back to the patrol car.’

‘You taking me in?’

‘Do I have any reason to?’

‘No, you fuckin’ do not.’

‘Fine.’

They stood beside the car and the driver switched on the beam.

‘What’s your name?’

‘I’ll tell you that when you tell me what you’ve been following me for when I ent done
nothing.’

‘Any reason you don’t want to give me your name?’

The man sighed. He was young, early twenties. Simon didn’t recognise him.

‘Gunton. Andrew Gunton.’

‘Where do you live?’

He gave an address on the Dulcie estate.

‘Thanks. You were driving a silver Jaguar XKV out of Lafferton. Is that your car?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why have you parked it behind that hangar?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Valuable
car like that? Aren’t you afraid it’ll be nicked or vandalised? Top-of-the-range motor I should guess. New, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why park it out here and walk off?’

‘I was leaving it for a mate.’

‘I see. What mate?’

‘Just a mate.’

‘What, he was going to pick it up from here?’

‘That’s it.’

‘How was he going to get hold of the keys?’

‘Left them in the car, didn’t I?’

‘Really? A bit careless.
Car like that.’

‘He’ll be here any minute.’

‘And how are you going to get home?’

‘He’ll give me a lift, OK?’

‘Have you been here before, Mr Gunton?’

‘What if I have?’

‘How many times?’

The man scraped his toe in the concrete. ‘Used to muck around here when I was a kid.’

‘I meant more recently than that. Have you been here recently?’

No reply.

‘Why did you park over by that hangar?’

‘Out the way.’

‘I see. You didn’t go in?’

‘What would I want to do that for? I told you I was just leaving me car.’

‘Have you ever been inside that hangar?’

‘Dunno. Might have. I told you, when I –’

‘No, not when you were a kid. In the last week?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Course I’m bloody sure, I don’t sleepwalk, I haven’t lost the use of me memory. I haven’t been in there.’

‘In any of the hangars?’

‘No, not in any of them. Look, what is this?’

‘Do you know anything about a nine-year-old boy called David Angus who went missing from outside his house?’

There was a stunned silence. Andrew Gunton stared blankly at Serrailler in the harsh glare of the car headlights.

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ he said softly after a moment, ‘is that what this is about?’

‘Answer the question please, Mr Gunton.’

‘Yes
I know about him. You couldn’t live in Lafferton and not know about him, could you, he’s everywhere, isn’t he, on every window on that poster. Poor little sod.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, of course I say that? Don’t you?’

‘Do you know anything about where he might be?’

Andy Gunton took a step forward. He spoke between clenched teeth and his face was angry. ‘No, I bloody do not. I wish I
did. I wish I could tell you I knew he was tucked up somewhere safe and warm and take you there but he ain’t, you and I know that.’

‘Do we? Do you?’

‘Listen, I might have done a lot of things –’

‘Such as?’

‘But so help me God and on my mother’s grave, I have never and would never so much as touch or harm a hair of any kid. I’ll bloody swear on any Bible right now, you listenin’?’ He was speaking
the truth. There was a pure and almost righteous anger in his tone and his words. Serrailler felt the truth blaze out of him.

‘You were driving a silver Jaguar XKV. You say it’s your car.’

‘Right.’

‘A silver Jaguar XKV of that model was seen in Sorrel Drive, near the Anguses’ house, the day before David Angus disappeared.’

‘Shit,’ Andrew Gunton said softly.

‘I’m going to ask you to come in
to the station and make a statement.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not arresting you, you understand?’

‘I don’t fuckin’ care if you do. I’ll make a statement. I’ll do anything you like, if it helps you find that kid.’

‘Thank you, Mr Gunton. If you’d get in the back of the patrol car please, I’ll meet you at the station.’

Simon sent them on their way, and got into his own car. The moon had come out and the
hangars cast great shadows over the old runways. They were rusty, their curved roofs blackened and broken open. Instead of following the patrol car across the airfield and out of the gateway, he drove towards the hangars and parked up beside the Jaguar.

It was silent. There was no wind, not the slightest movement of air.

He did not care to follow instincts and hunches, but he had a strong sense
of emptiness about this place and no sense of either evil or danger. Nothing had happened here of any relevance to David’s disappearance, no child was hidden here, alive or dead. Simon was certain of it as he stood in the mild night, hearing nothing but the occasional hoot of an owl far away.

He went towards the first hangar. The door hung off but on this one the roof was more or less intact.
He went in. There was grass beneath his feet. The air smelled faintly metallic. Nothing. He coughed. No one was there.

He came out and walked across to the next hangar a few yards away. As he did so, he heard the sound of a vehicle coming down the lane and turning on to the track. He froze against the hangar wall. Headlights sliced across the grass and then the hangar itself, before swerving
away. Simon edged his way out, keeping to the sides of the building. There were no voices. He heard a car door click shut and the scuffle of a footstep. He moved around the side of the hangar, ducked, and ran quickly to the shadow of the next. As he did so, car lights came on and an engine started up. Simon dodged out and into the open, holding up his arm. There were two vehicles, the silver Jaguar
with its engine running, and what looked like a small pickup truck.

‘Police!’

He banked on their not sussing that he was alone, and stood in the path of the Jaguar.

Seconds later, he was on his side, rolling over and over across the concrete towards the edge of the hangar, having missed being run over by inches as the driver had accelerated the pickup truck straight at him. He lay, an agonising
pain thrusting through his right arm and shoulder. The Jaguar and the pickup were away, out of the airfield and along the road, tyres screaming. Serrailler cursed himself for a bloody fool and felt with his good arm for his mobile. It had fallen out of his jacket and must have landed somewhere on the ground. It took him some minutes to crawl and feel about, wincing with pain. The palm of his
hand was painful too and wet with blood.

He swore on, sweeping about blindly. It was only when his phone rang that he located it, to the right of where he had been searching. It stopped as he managed to pull it to him but it was easy enough to press redial.

Ten minutes later, two police cars and an ambulance came on to the airfield. His arm hurt badly, his hand was full of gravel. But he realised
that he was on a high in spite of his injuries, adrenalin pumping through him; he was no longer brooding. He had the buzz that had always come from being in the action, as he rarely seemed to be these days, the buzz which he had gone into the police force to find, and which kept him there. Little over an hour ago he had been lying in bed, tossing and failing to sleep. It might have been in another
life.

‘You can tell by those densely packed isobars …’

Meriel Serrailler knew that she could not but leaned forward all the same to stare at the whorls and swirls across the television map. Impossible to see where Lafferton could be in the midst of it all, but the general picture seemed to be wet and very windy.

She pressed the red button on the remote control and the picture shrank to a
pinprick.

‘Any news?’ Richard Serrailler came in.

‘Wars and pestilence.’

‘Weather?’

‘Rain and wind. But not until tomorrow or the day after.’

He made an impatient noise and retreated. Meriel got up and followed him into the kitchen where he had begun to set out the tray for their late-night tea.

‘I’m rather keen on rain at the moment. If it hadn’t been raining on Saturday, the hospice would
be a million pounds worse off.’

Her husband glanced up. ‘You don’t seriously believe this nonsense, do you? It’s quite ridiculous.’

‘Why is it ridiculous?’

‘You cannot tell me some unknown American walks into Blackfriars Hall out of the rain and genuinely offers a million pounds to build a day centre. Why on earth would he do that?’

‘Because he’s a generous man. And very rich.’

‘It’s a nonsense.
Some scheme.’

‘Now
you
are being ridiculous. What sort of “scheme”?’

‘No idea. But you won’t see your million pounds.’

‘Why must you be so dismissive? You should trust people, Richard.’

‘I trust some.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’

She looked at him in surprise and something in her stomach tightened.

‘Well, of course I do.’ Richard Serrailler poured the water into the pot and replaced the lid. ‘I know
you. Not some Yank. People like that get their kicks from shows of power. There’ll be no money.’

He picked up the tray. He wanted her to argue, to come back at him. It was what he most enjoyed. Usually she would have done so, partly to keep him happy, partly because she believed in George Caxton Philips and his million.

‘You didn’t meet him,’ she said quietly.

‘Didn’t need to.’

She let it
go. She was trembling.

They went back into the small sitting room.

At that moment, walking behind him, she knew what she would do.

She had thought she could carry it locked within her until the end of her life and if he had not said that he trusted her, she believed she would have done so. Why not? She felt no guilt. She did feel regret, but regret she could live with. Regret was part of the
fabric of her life. But sitting here now in the quiet room, watching her husband lift the china cup with the blue-and-gold band to his mouth, looking at the way his hand curved round it, seeing him close his eyes as he swallowed, no, she could not carry it.

The clock had a white china face and slender gold hands. It had been a wedding present from a friend of her mother’s, forty-three years ago.
As Meriel watched it now, it seemed to grow and become distorted, its face to shine, then to glare out at her in anger, the gold hands blazing as if they were on fire. The pale green wallpaper behind it wavered.