‘I’m sorry to have startled you,’ said Delaney.
The man looked back, the skin on his forehead like paper wrinkled into a thousand creases. ‘It’s been a bit of a day.’
And if that wasn’t the understatement of the year, Delaney didn’t know what was. Maybe the guy
‘Yeah,’ he said and pulled up a chair. It had been a bit of a day, all right.
The scream shrieked in the air as though someone was being tortured.
Graham Harper picked the kettle off the gas ring and the whistling mercifully stopped. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, detective?’ he asked.
Delaney shook his head. The English. Here was a man who not a few hours before had had his grandchild abducted under his very own nose and was now worried about the social niceties of making tea for his guest.
‘No, thanks. I just want to go over what happened with you again.’
‘I’ve told everybody a hundred times. I don’t know. I was in my shed. Two minutes later I came out and he had gone. I assumed he was playing up in the woods – I let him dig for bottles there.’
Harper moved to the dresser beside the door into the kitchen and handed Delaney a small blue bottle, about five inches high and with hexagonal sides. ‘It’s Victorian, a poison bottle. They used blue for poison.’
Delaney looked at the object. ‘Is it worth anything?’
The elderly man shrugged and took it back from him. ‘Not really. But Archie liked to dig, see if he could find any more. I was going to get him a metal detector for Christmas …’ He broke off, took the bottle back and turned away, busying himself pouring out his tea.
Delaney waited until he’d finished and then asked, ‘You say he liked to dig?’
‘If the weather was good, yes.’
‘What with?’
Graham Harper seemed puzzled as he sat opposite Delaney, supping his tea noisily through discoloured teeth. ‘I’m sorry, what do you mean?’
‘What did he dig with? There was a spade in your shed but it hadn’t been used recently.’
‘Well, I told him he couldn’t dig today. The ground was too muddy.’
Delaney glanced down at his own shoes. That much was true.
‘So talk me through it. You walked down to the allotment and when you got to your patch or plot or whatever you call it, he came into the shed with you?’
‘Yes, just for a minute, and when I found my cigarettes … he wanted to wait outside.’
Delaney caught the slight hesitation.
‘He wanted to wait outside?’
The old man hesitated again. ‘I told him to wait outside.’
‘While you had a smoke.’
‘The smoke gets on his clothes. She can smell it. His mum, she’s always telling me off.’
‘And what did you hear?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like him playing? Singing. Rattling a stick on the fence. Throwing rocks at birds in the trees.’
‘No, I didn’t hear a thing. But my hearing, it’s not so good.’
‘I see you have a hearing aid.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it turned on?’
‘Yes, I had it switched on.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I had the radio on.’
Delaney took out his notebook. ‘You didn’t mention that earlier.’
The elderly man looked away shiftily. ‘I must have forgot. It’s not important, is it? I mean, what does it matter?’ His voice rose, tremulous and upset.
Delaney leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘I don’t know yet what’s important and what isn’t. That’s how these things work. But what I do know is that you have to be entirely honest with me.’
‘I have been.’
Delaney could hear the catch in Harper’s voice, could see his gaze slide away whenever he made eye contact,
