‘You don’t want to take any notice of what she says. You think you’re getting somewhere and then she flies off at a tangent. Everything gets mixed up in her head. She remembers someone from long ago and then’s convinced she’s just seen them. For a time she thought I was her daughter.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ Kathy looked at the dark figure marching down the street.‘Yasher doesn’t look happy.’
‘He’s mad because your lot interviewed him yesterday and practically accused him of being a Turkish drug baron. He thinks someone in the square has been making trouble for him with the cops. I was trying to convince him it wasn’t me.’
‘Did he do that to your face?’
‘I bumped into something in the workshop.’ She paused, staring at the crowd milling outside the gallery, and her mouth turned down with distaste.
‘It’s quite a circus, isn’t it?’ Kathy said.
‘Yeah. You were right, Gabe’s got a talent for it.’
Kathy got the impression that the tribute wasn’t altogether a compliment. Then Poppy abruptly said,‘Gotta go,’ and hurried away.
Kathy checked her watch. She was running late for the briefing, but she had to find out what Betty had meant. It had sounded as if she was saying she knew where Tracey was. Kathy climbed the steps to her front door and called through the letterbox. ‘Betty? It’s me. The others have gone. Please come and talk to me.’
She listened but heard nothing and called out again. Still nothing.
She was on the point of giving up when the door opened suddenly in front of her. Betty stood there, wild- eyed, hair everywhere. ‘There!’ she said, and thrust something into Kathy’s face. Kathy took a step back and reached for it. It was a small canvas on a wooden stretcher, unframed. The oil paint was thick and crudely applied, and Kathy felt it still slightly soft beneath her thumb. It was a rudimentary portrait of a human face, pink, with yellow hair and bright blue eyes.
‘You see?’ Betty laughed.‘She’s still here with me.’
‘Did she do this, Betty?’ Kathy asked, but Betty only lifted an index finger to her lips.
‘Sh! Secrets!’ she whispered. She snatched back the picture and slammed the door shut.
14
There were several badger jokes at the Monday morning briefing, talk of badgering witnesses and digging someone out of their set, which Brock tolerated. In fact, Kathy had the impression that he rather relished Rudd’s little stunt. But the antics in Northcote Square were a sideshow, with the focus of the investigation fixed on trying to discover the place in which, they had to assume, Abbott and Wylie had hidden Tracey, and to find Stan Dodworth, who might have some idea where it was.
Bren summarised what was in progress; the visits to wall-climbing associates in Northampton and Southend, the search of letting agents’ records for a rented storeroom, the examination of Rainbow camera footage across London for sightings of Wylie’s white van on the night of Tracey’s disappearance. The forensic reporting officer followed this with a summary of possible leads from the detritus of Wylie’s flat: unmatched fibre samples, unlabelled keys, traces of chalky soil, photographs of unidentified places. An officer from SO5, the Child Protection unit, spoke of information gleaned from the computers of other known paedophiles that pointed to Abbott and Wylie, but the evidence was sketchy since the hard drive in the flat had been cooked and no other computer had been found. The psychologist profiler attempted to interpret the workings of the two men’s minds.
Dodworth’sdisappearancewasdiscussed. Tyneside police were currently checking his family and friends in the north. Someone suggested that if he knew of Tracey’s hiding place he might have gone there to try to help her, but this seemed implausible. More likely, someone else suggested, he’d been in on it with Abbott and Wylie, and was currently trying to
erase his tracks. There was an ominous silence in the room as people considered what this might mean for Tracey.
The task seemed daunting, and the cost of failure depressingly high, but Brock stirred them to action, loading them with tasks. Kathy’s was to speak once again to Tracey’s grandparents, in the hope that the girl might have said something to them during her weekend visits that had been overlooked.
She took her car onto the Hammersmith Flyover and steered for the M4. Traffic was heavy, with trucks thundering out to Heathrow and beyond, to Bristol and the West Country, buffeting her little Renault, and she was glad when the signs for the turn-off to West Drayton appeared. She had decided not to ring the Nolans in advance, hoping to catch them unprepared, but when she reached the crescent of shops near their home she came upon them unexpectedly as they emerged from the butcher. Kathy pulled in to the kerb and watched them stop to say a few words to a woman with a pair of fat corgis, wave to a couple loading groceries into their car, then continue past the off-licence, the Taj Mahal restaurant and Shirley’s Hair Affair, to disappear into the newsagent. According to the A-Z their house was close by, and Kathy decided to wait for them there. She drove slowly through narrow suburban streets jammed with parked cars and found a space outside their number, one of a row of semis. Its paintwork was new, its windows sparkling in the weak autumn sunlight, and the little front lawn looked as if it had been groomed with nail scissors around the ornamental sundial centrepiece. Kathy didn’t doubt that it would be aligned with precision.
After a few minutes she saw the Nolans with their shopping bags turn into the street. She waited until they were near before getting out of the car. They looked surprised, but Kathy had an odd feeling that they were expecting her.
‘Is there news?’ Bev asked.
‘Nothing new, I’m afraid. I’d just like a few words, if you’ve got the time,’ Kathy said.
‘Of course,’ Len said. ‘As long as you’re not hoping to catch us out, find Tracey hidden in the attic.’
‘Len!’ his wife scolded.
‘Should I be looking there?’ Kathy smiled.
‘You wouldn’t have much luck, but I thought our sonin-law might have put some such idea in your head. He’s the one with the remarkable imagination after all, if the Sunday papers are to be believed.’
‘Take no notice, Kathy,’Bev said.‘Is it all right to call you Kathy? Sergeant is so, well, military. Come inside and have a cup of coffee and tell us about any progress.’ She stopped suddenly and sighed. ‘Oh Len, we forgot the stamps from the post office.’
‘Always forgetting something. Anyway,’ Len said, getting in a last jab, ‘there was no chance you’d catch us unawares. Enid across the street spotted you straight away and phoned us on the mobile to warn us there was a young woman waiting for us outside our house, and was it a relative or one of my mistresses? Nosy old bitch.’
The interior of the house was as immaculate as the exterior. Len took their coats and Bev showed Kathy through to a small sitting room overlooking the back garden. Through the French windows Kathy saw that the yard had been divided precisely down the middle, a vegetable garden on the left, flower beds on the right. A neat herringbone brick path formed the centre line, a frontier between utility and ornament.
While Bev made coffee, Kathy studied the framed photos on the mantelpiece-Tracey, Len and Bev, and a young woman, presumably their dead daughter, Jane. No Gabe.
‘She looks like her mum, don’t you reckon?’ Len said from behind her. Kathy wasn’t sure if he meant Jane or Tracey, but in fact it was true of them both. The particular twinkle in the eyes, the wide mouth, the fine blonde hair, were carried through the three generations, from Bev to Jane to Tracey, becoming, if anything, clearer and more pronounced.
‘Yes.’ Kathy had noticed framed drawings in both the hall and here in the lounge, pastel figure studies of ballet dancers. The signature, a discreet flourish, was Jane Nolan.
‘She did those when she was still at school,’ Len said, seeing her looking at them.‘Brilliant at drawing.’
‘She got her talent from Len,’ Bev said, coming in with a tray.
He took it from her and set it down.‘Rubbish. There’s nothing artistic about me.’
‘You know what I mean. He might show you his work later, if he’s in the mood,’ Bev said to Kathy.‘Sit down, dear.’
