No longer caring about the neighbours, he picked up a rock from the garden and smashed one of the glass door panels. As he predicted, no alarm sounded and no one came running.
He reached in and unlatched the door, pushing it cautiously inwards. Matching the garden the kitchen was a state, the worktops a chaos of unclean mugs, overflowing ashtrays, takeaway cartons, and a sink full of plates festering in stagnant water. The room looked lived in, but the rest of the house couldn’t offer the same. As he moved from room to room, much like he had at the Faulkner home, he found only disappointment, signs of life having recently moved on. The topmost floor was one large attic space with creaking floorboards and peeling wallpaper, but as he looked closer he found something that made his stomach turn. In a corner of the room was a red and blue painted toy train. He wondered if Frasier had played with it, filling his innocent time, his little mind trying to understand why he was there, what he was going to be made to do.
What he had already been made to do.
What remained of York’s fragile walls came tumbling down around him, brick by lonely brick. He slid down the wall in a flurry of wretched sobs, clutching the toy train to his chest. He turned it over and over in his hands, examining every inch of its significance. How late was he – days, hours?
Through the blur of tears he scrutinized every surface, every fleck of peeling wallpaper, every dust-laden crevice. If Frasier had ever been here, he was gone now.
*
Leaving the house by the front door he caught sight of the woman perched on the bonnet of his car. Blonde hair bobbed neatly, cute and demure; finally the woman from the alley was making an appearance.
She greeted him as he reached her, her serious face scrutinising his movement. He took a seat on the bonnet next to her, stared straight ahead, the feeling of disappointment dripping steadily into his self-made pool of deprivation.
‘What’s your name?’ he muttered pinching the bridge of his nose. His head was beginning to ache.
‘Kellie,’ she replied. ‘Kellie Carter.’
‘Why are you here, Kellie Carter?’
She glanced sideways at him. ‘I told you I’d approach you when the time was right.’
‘I take it you’re no longer being followed?’
‘You’ve been in the house, you tell me.’
‘There’s nothing in there, Kellie,’ he revealed quietly. ‘Not a fucking bean.’
At the end of the street, three girls played with a skipping rope, their carefree faces beaming. He watched them for a moment.
‘I’m sorry, Nicolas. I didn’t mean to give you false hope. But you need to stay strong for the sake of your son.’
‘For the sake of my sanity.’
‘Frasier is out there,’ she assured him. ‘I promise you.’
‘How could you possibly know that? You don’t know me, my past, and you certainly don’t know my son.’
‘I’m a journalist,’ she revealed. ‘I’ve been watching these guys for a long time trying to split open a big story. They’re from Latvia, a group of ex-militia who came fresh out of service and into the trafficking business. They were working out of Belgium in '86 but were kicked out after several children disappeared. The Latvians were in the country illegally so the authorities didn’t have any legal trouble getting rid of them. After that they set up in Hanover, Germany. They’re still operating there now as far as I know, but a group of them broke away and came here.
‘One night I got friendly with one of them and he invited me back to his house. He brought me here. Others were here too, and that’s when I heard one of them talking on the phone to The Face. I got the feeling none of the men knew who The Face was, but it was obvious he was running the operation. The way they talked to him, there was respect, even fear in their voices. The second and final time I came back here, four boys were being brought in from the backyard. One of them was Frasier. I recognised him from the photographs.’
‘Did he look okay? I mean, did he look hurt?’
‘He looked confused, frightened. But I think he was uninjured.’
York let the information sink in. ‘Wait a minute, what photographs?’
‘The ones Holly showed me. She looked up to you, Nicolas, wanted to make you proud.’
‘Wait, you’re Kellie? Holly’s Kellie?’
‘You sound surprised.’ Kellie’s eyes began to well. ‘I loved her, Nicolas. As immoral as it was with her being married, we spent a lot of time together, and she talked a lot about you and about what happened to your family.’
York’s eyes strayed back to the skipping girls.
‘Holly had her own problems,’ Kellie persisted. ‘She didn’t want to be with David anymore, but she didn’t know how to leave him. I told her I was on the verge of ending our relationship if she didn’t make a choice soon, told her I’d met someone else. It wasn’t true. I just wanted to hurt her. You have no idea how much I regret those words. The last time I saw her, all I did was ramble on about this scoop, about nailing these bastards down in print. She refused to help me, told me to report it through the proper channels.’
‘What happened?’
‘I got angry, stormed out. That was the last time I saw her, and I haven’t slept since knowing that that’s how I treated her at the end.’
York shifted uneasily on the bonnet.
‘I want you to know,’ she added, ‘that you meant a great deal to her. She loved working with you…’ She took his hand in
