Dean to go in and buy a bottle of cider. The remaining six of them had gone up to Old Oak Common and sat on the grass and drunk the cider and ‘had a laugh’ until it and the cigarettes had run out, at which point the other four had departed.
The recitation of this emptiness would have depressed Slider if he hadn’t heard it so many times before, and if it hadn’t seemed to be leading to something he needed to know.
‘What time do you think that was?’ he asked. ‘When the others left?’
Chantelle shrugged, but Tyler said, ‘It musta bin about eleven, summing like that. Cos when I texted Bazza it said eleven-fifteen on the phone, and that was after.’
This generation, Slider reflected, told the time more often by their mobiles than by watches. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What happened next?’
Alone together, the couple had chatted a bit and texted some friends, and then had grown amorous. They had started ‘snogging’, but after a bit they got annoyed because there were so many people coming past, and some of them tutted, and some of them stared, and Chantelle ‘lost it’ and mouthed off at them. Tyler didn’t want to get in a fight because he was more interested in Chantelle’s jugs and the prospect of investigating her knickers, so he proposed that they move round behind the council changing-room block. In its shadow, and concealed from the road, they would have a bit of privacy. And there they stayed, preoccupied with each other, until the girl had come along.
Chantelle, who had had her back to the wall, had seen her first across Tyler’s shoulder, coming across the Scrubs from the direction of the fair. She was carrying her shoes, and looked ‘pissed off’.
‘Was she crying?’ Slider asked.
‘Nah. But she might’ve been crying before.’ An effort of thought dredged up a detail. ‘She ’ad, like, mascara under here.’ She pointed under her eyes. ‘Like it’d run.’
‘What did she do next?’
The girl had passed by, and at this point Tyler had first seen her, going past the building and down towards the edge of the common, where it joined the pavement and the road. He described her as blonde, about his age, wearing a mauve top and a black skirt, and agreed she was carrying her shoes. She had stood around a bit, and then come back towards them.
‘She’d def’nitely bin crying,’ Tyler said. ‘You could see she was upset.’
‘I was gonna give ’er a mouf-ful,’ Chantelle admitted. ‘I mean, can’t a person get no privacy? But Tyler’s a softy.’
‘So she comes up and says she’s sorry for disturbing us,’ Tyler took up the story. ‘She had, like, this posh voice.’
‘Snobby cow,’ Chantelle said with automatic viciousness.
‘But it was manners, Chant, to say sorry an’ that,’ Tyler urged. Chantelle sniffed and rolled her eyes, unwilling to be convinced. ‘Anyway, she says – this girl says – she’s left her mobile at home, and can she use mine to make a call.’
‘I says no. Bloody cheek! Who’d she think she was?’ Chantelle interrupted.
‘But she said she’d pay for the call,’ said Tyler. ‘She says she needs to call someone to pick her up.’
‘She said that?’ Slider’s ears pricked with interest. ‘Did she say who? Her dad, maybe?’ But she was so close to home she could have walked it easily. Yet where else could she be taken at that time of night? Perhaps she wanted to speak to him out of earshot of her mother. Of course, she didn’t know Wilding had been out all evening – although he might have gone home by then: his timings under interview had been very vague.
‘No, she never said,’ Tyler answered. ‘I said go on then, and give her my phone, and she made a call.’
‘Did you hear anything of what she said? Anything at all?’
‘Nah, she took it and walked off a bit, and turned her back.’
‘I said to ’im you wanter watch she don’t nick it,’ Chantelle contributed.
‘She never wanted to nick it, Chant. She just wanted to call somebody. Anyway, she brings the phone back and says thank you, all posh, and offers me money. A two-quid piece it was. I said forget it.’
‘I told you he was a softy. I’d’ve took it.’
‘Well, she was upset,’ Tyler excused himself. ‘She weren’t on long.’
‘I’d’ve still took it. Snobby cow.’
There was a pause. ‘So what happened next?’ Slider asked.
Tyler and Chantelle had gone back to their kissing. Glancing that way from time to time, Tyler had seen the girl sit on the grass and put her shoes on. Then she stood by the side of the road as if she was waiting for someone. After a bit, a car came past, and Tyler had seen her perk up, as if she recognised it. It had gone past and stopped under the bridge, and she had hurried down to it, and got in.
‘What sort of car was it?’ Slider asked, mental fingers crossed.
‘It was a Ford Focus,’ Chantelle said. ‘I know, because my dad’s got one.’
‘What colour?’
‘I dunno. Black I think. I never see it proper till it was under the bridge, an’ it’s dark under there.’
‘Could it have been dark blue?’ Slider asked.
‘Coulda bin,’ Chantelle said after thought. ‘A right dark blue, though.’
‘Did you see the registration number?’
She was scornful. ‘What am I, a kid? Car numbers? I ’ad better fings to fink about.’
Slider turned to Tyler, and tried to give him a man-to-man, women-don’t-understand-these-things look. ‘You didn’t happen to notice the registration number, did you?’
‘Well,’ Tyler said, with deep reluctance to rupture the bond. ‘No. I never. I didn’t know it was important.’
‘Of course not,’ Slider said comfortingly. ‘But even if you remember part of it, it would help. A couple of letters?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I never looked at it. But it weren’t a Focus, it was a Toyota Corolla.’
‘Shut up! It was a Focus,’ Chantelle said hotly. ‘D’you fink I don’t know me own dad’s car?’
‘Honest, Chant, it was a Corolla. They look the same from the back,’ he added placatingly. He looked at Slider. ‘Honest.’
‘What colour?’ Slider asked, his mind on tiptoe.
‘It was black, but that new black that’s, like, a bit blue. Sapphire Black they call it, but it looks blue sometimes, if you catch it that way. I see it as it come past, under the lights. But it
‘Did you see who was in the car as it went past?’ Slider asked next.
‘Nah, but I see him later when he got out,’ Tyler said.
‘Yeah,’ Chantelle took over, sensing the glory bit was coming, the bit that might earn the reward. ‘Tyler says she’s got out the car again, this girl, so I looks over there, and she’s like, running across the grass, or, like, half- running, cause her heels were, like, sticking in.’
‘Was she crying?’
‘Yeah, she might’ve been.’
‘I see her put her hands up to her face,’ Tyler said. ‘Like this.’ He mimed wiping his eyes. ‘And then I see this man get out the car and go after her.’
Slider breathed a breath of pure happiness. ‘So you got a look at him? Can you describe him to me?’
‘Well,’ Tyler said, exchanging a glance with his beloved which broke Slider’s heart. ‘See, the thing is, when I see him get out, I says to Chantelle, “That bloke’s getting out the car,” and she says, “Bloody ’ell, it’s like Piccadilly Bleeding Circus, let’s go ’ome”.’
‘I was fed up of being stared at, and all these people around,’ she defended herself. ‘If him and this girl was going to ’ave a row, I’d ’ad enough. I says to Tyler, “Let’s go”.’
‘She, like, pulls me arm, so I turned the other way, and we went,’ Tyler said unhappily, realizing he had blown his chance of fame. ‘So I never really got a look at him. He was tall, though,’ he added eagerly, offering a crumb.
‘Anything else?’ Slider asked. ‘How old?’
They both shook their heads. Tyler said, ‘Not young. I mean, he was a grown-up. I dunno how old.’
