‘I phoned Doncaster nick. Nobody there has ever head of him.’
*
‘Okay. Calm down, Mary,’ said Jack Delaney into his mobile phone as he stood outside Sally’s car, parked up the street from Father Fitzpatrick’s abandoned house. ‘We’re in Ealing now. So we’re not too far away. I’ll check back at her house.’
He closed the phone and got into the car. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘Something wrong, sir?’ Sally asked as she started the engine and pulled away from the kerb.
‘Gloria had an appointment with Mary today. She never showed up.’
‘And …?’
‘And I don’t know. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. So put your foot on the floor.’
Delaney leaned forward to flick the siren switch on as they hammered past a bemused-looking Duncton who was coming out of the missing priest’s house.
*
Delaney walked across the room and opened the curtains. Bright daylight spilled into the room. Lighting up the display of photos and maps and newspaper cuttings that covered the facing wall. Sally was stood examining the cuttings. The photo of Delaney in uniform holding the young Gloria in his arms had been circled many times in green ink. She looked at the rest of the material, baffled.
‘What does it all mean, sir?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Delaney replied, picking up a photo from the table – the same photo that had hung on the wall of The Crawfish pub. The photo of Peter Garnier with Graham Hall, Father Michael Fitzpatrick, Tim Radnor, the unknown fisherman and in the background behind the bar a blonde woman whose identity he couldn’t make out.
He turned over the photo and written on the back were the names he had just been running through, and one other. Bill Thompson.
He handed the photo over to Sally, who whistled silently and reached for her mobile.
Delaney put his hand on her arm. ‘What are you doing, Sally?’
‘Phoning it in, sir.’
‘No, you’re not!’ he said in a voice that cut short any argument. He pointed to the montage on the wall behind her. ‘This changes everything.’
Sally looked at him for a moment and then nodded. ‘Sir.’
Delaney hit the speed dial on his own mobile. ‘Dave,’ he said as the call was answered. ‘I need an address in Harrow, I need it quick and it stays between you and me – okay?’ He listened and nodded. ‘I owe you one. The name is Bill Thompson.’
*
Archie Wood’s stomach hurt, and every time he closed his eyes he could see the man’s hungry eyes staring back at him. He huddled into the corner. He didn’t know where the man was. He hadn’t seen him in a long while. But he was scared of him. He remembered getting up one morning six months ago, and finding his pet dog, a Golden Labrador called Honey, lying in front of the cold fire in the front room of his house. Dead. Her eyes had been open, staring coldly. No light in them. They’d been like the man’s eyes.
Archie put his arms around himself and pulled his knees up to his chest. He wished Honey was still alive. She would have protected him. She would never have let him be taken away from his home, from his dad and his mum. Thinking of his mum made his eyes sting. He blinked, trying to hold back the tears. He just wanted his mum to come through the door and rescue him. He snuggled deeper into the corner, making himself as small as possible. He didn’t even have his own clothes. He’d hated the jumper with a picture of a giraffe on it that his mum had given him for one of his birthday presents. But he wished he had it back now. He felt the tears starting again and squeezed his eyes shut hard. Big boys don’t cry. That’s what his dad always said to him. Big boys don’t cry.
Then he heard a key being fitted into a lock and the creaking sound of an old door opening in the hallway outside. He heard the footsteps again and tried to huddle even closer into the corner. He kept his eyes shut and didn’t even try to stop the tears that were flowing from them now.
The mantra in his head sounding again and again, trying to blot out the cold and the fear and the pain.
‘The wheels on the bus go round and round. Round and round. Round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round. And round and round again.’
*
Delaney picked his way through the rubbish-strewn back garden of Bill Thompson’s house in Hill Road, fifty yards from Carlton Row. The grass, what was left of it, was overgrown and shot through with weeds. There were blue plastic crates dotted throughout, rubble, broken bottles, empty beer cans and a distinctive smell that Delaney couldn’t place. It wasn’t pleasant.
‘What is that smell?’ Delaney asked Sally Cartwright as she followed behind him, stepping carefully over the rubble and garbage.
‘I have no idea, sir,’ she said, with a grimace. ‘But it smells like something’s died.’
Delaney nodded. ‘That’s what I was worried about.’
A short while later and Delaney kicked in the back door of the house. This time it opened easily – the wood was quite rotten in the frame. They stepped into a large tile-flagged kitchen. It reminded Delaney of Graham Harper’s, but bigger. Built sometime in the 1950s, probably, and not been much touched since. The smell was stronger inside the house. A salty, fetid, sickly sweet, rotting smell. There were two shop-size chest freezers running along the wall that faced the sink unit, which was long, made of stainless steel and looked industrial.
