I’d wanted to come here alone. I’d told Berrin that this was because it would waste less time. I’d got him hunting down any further information he could find on Contracts International, and chasing Leppel for the list of Bosnian operatives. The real reason, however, was to give me an opportunity to revisit the scene of what I considered one of my most important pieces of unfinished business, and perhaps take a bit more time to reflect on what had happened that cold, dark morning.
The newsagent for whom Robert did his round was situated on Highbury Grove, approximately half a mile north-east of where I now stood. This street, Runmayne Avenue, was about halfway along his route. He would make his way down Runmayne, which was just under a quarter of a mile long, then come back the other way on Fairfield Avenue, the next street down, before returning along the main road back to the newsagent’s. I was sure it was on this street that Robert had been snatched. Even at that time in the morning, there were cars and people about. Not that many, but enough to expect that if he’d continued the whole length of it he’d have been seen by someone else. After all, he would hardly have been inconspicuous.
Franks’s house was about a hundred yards further along from the spot where Robert had last been seen and wasn’t one to which he delivered. Slowly, I started towards it, trying to remember the exact route he would have taken and which houses he delivered to, but without much success. It was too long ago. Too much time and too many cases had come to pass since then, and already the life of Robert Jones was passing into ancient history. He would always be remembered, of course, by his parents and his sister, but even they would think about him less and less as time wore on, and to everyone else he would simply become a vague memory, a smiling, permanently young face in a photograph that would occasionally inspire a sad and wistful conversation. It was more than a tragedy, it was an injustice. Someone, some day, would have to pay.
Franks’s place was the end extension of a huge villa, set back a few yards from the road, that probably housed at least half a dozen professionally spacious flats and which had two grand entrance porticoes along its length. The extension had been built much later than the villa, probably in the sixties, and looked as if it had been attached at a slightly crooked angle. The paintwork was a fading sky blue rather than the white of the rest of the building, making it stand out for the wrong reasons. Apart from that, though, it looked OK. Small, but reasonably well kept. Newish windows had been installed on both floors, and there was a tiny, recently cobbled driveway in front of it with room for two cars at a squeeze. A high stone wall separated it from the main parking area in front of the rest of the villa, as if its occupants didn’t want anything to do with their tattier neighbour.
Today, Franks’s driveway was empty as I walked up it to the front door. Through the net curtains, I could make out a clean, well-furnished interior but no obvious signs of life. I rang the doorbell but no-one answered, then looked through the letterbox. There was a pile of tacky-looking brochures and various other bits of junk mail on the carpet – at least a week’s worth, probably a lot more. It looked like he might have moved out.
I went round to the nearest entrance portico and saw that there were buzzers for three flats on the wall outside. Beneath the buzzers was a sticker saying that the building was protected by CCTV cameras – not that I could see any in evidence. I rang the first two but got no answer, so I tried the third. I needed to ring several times but eventually a moderately annoyed female voice came on the line. ‘Yes?’ she said in an accusatory voice. I identified myself, and explained that I was here as part of an inquiry. Her voice immediately lost its initial hostility, and she buzzed me in. Hers was the ground-floor flat, and she came out of the door to greet me, clad only in a dressing gown and slippers. She was about thirty with short blonde hair, and nice-looking in a Sloaney sort of way. In a dressing gown as well. Perhaps I was going to have to watch out.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize you were the police. I thought you were here to sell me something.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not,’ I told her.
She smiled. ‘I don’t know either. Anyway, please, come in. You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve got a terrible cold. That’s why I’m not working.’ She sniffed loudly to prove it, then stepped aside to let me in. ‘I hope it’s nothing about David,’ she added, leading me into a spacious, well-furnished lounge.
‘David?’
‘My husband.’
I took a seat and she sat down on the sofa opposite, her legs tightly pressed together. Somehow, I got the feeling I was safe from any predatory advances. ‘No, it’s nothing to do with him. It’s about your neighbour to the left, a Tony Franks?’
‘Oh yes, Tony. Nice-looking guy. Dark hair.’ Her tones were clipped and upper-class. This girl had definitely not been educated at the local comprehensive. Mind you, who had round here?
I nodded. ‘That sounds like him. This is a photo.’ I removed the mugshot from my jacket pocket and briefly showed it to her.
‘Oh yes, that’s him.’ She excused herself while she sneezed into a tissue she’d removed from the pocket of the
