‘I’ve brought him back to you,’ Collins said coldly. ‘We can’t get any sense out of him. Ask him what he was up to last night.’ Her walkie-talkie was fizzing dangerously in the wet.
‘Well, Tony?’ Fran asked, and felt sorry for him. His curls were pressed down damply to his forehead. He looked like Benny off Crossroads.
Fran was struck by another thought. ‘Have you dropped the vagrancy charges?’
Collins nodded. ‘He is clearly very upset and disturbed.’ Uninvited, she sat down. ‘How are his children?’
‘The baby’s having a nap. I gave the other one to my friend Jane.’ Fran looked at Tony. ‘What’s he got in his hands?’
‘He won’t tell us. I presume it is something belonging to his wife.’
He looked up sharply. ‘It’s her locket. Her mother’s locket.’ Tony held it up so that it glittered in the steamy kitchen. The two tiny photos, shiny and hard as thumbnails, dangled between his plump, red hands. ‘Pictures of Meg Mortimer and Elsie Tanner. She always wore this. Strong women, she said.’
Fran grabbed his wrist. ‘Did you find it, Tony? Did you find this last night?’
He nodded. ‘Under the bridge. When I went looking. I found it in the light.’ His face crumpled. ‘She left it behind for me.’
Detective Inspector Collins was already speaking into her radio.
Penny opened another packet of biscuits. The first two were cracked, so she ate them quickly in the kitchen, put the rest of the packet on the tray with the mugs of coffee, took a deep breath, and carried the whole lot into the living room where Jane was staring blankly at This Morning. Judy and Richard were talking about keeping warm this winter.
Penny wasn’t going to school this morning. She was having a quiet day.
‘I thought I’d come and see Liz. I needed someone to talk to. I couldn’t get any sense out of my mother.’
Penny nudged the biscuits at her, nearly choking on her own crumbs. ‘So what’s it all about then? You said something about a dog man?’
‘Vicki said her mum’s been taken by the dog man.’
‘Right.’
‘I think the world’s gone mad.’
Penny didn’t want to even think about madness. This morning she had woken up with the distinct impression that she had dreamed of driving a tank, crushing everything in her path. Her foot clamped on the accelerator (did tanks have accelerator pedals?) had been wearing a sandal. She woke with cramp.
‘And my mother’s too busy with her peg-leg boyfriend and, would you believe it, his wet nephew, who’s a you-know-what if ever there was one —’
‘So your mother’s not interested?’
‘She’s wound up in her wedding plans. Oh, she was very concerned about Nesta’s vanishing and the wellbeing of the poor orphans left behind. But what about me being stuck with her brats?’
‘What do you think a dog man can be, then?’ Penny was pushing idly at different avenues of conversation, urging Jane here and there because she was bored with her. Jane consented to be shoved, her voice quavering.
‘You can’t listen to everything that kid says. I’ll have to go and pick her up soon. And Peter. God, I hope I’m not neglecting him over this!’
She dunked a chocolate biscuit in her coffee, held it there a moment too long, and it sank without a trace.
He lay around for a while that morning, having fond memories. Andy had gone, purposeful and independent, striding across town to sort his life out. He’d used all the hot water in the tank, too. Vince heard his dad going in some time after him and cursing. Vince lay low.
It was the weekend. It was like weekends when he was a child: dismal, nagged by dread. He realised that he hated the idea of the next week. It was too familiar a feeling. The dread came back like an older, more intimate friend than Andy. Once his dad had told him that, of course, everyone hated the week ahead. Everyone hated work. But they had to do it. It was grown up. It was responsibility. The problem with Vince was that he expected to love what he was doing. He thought he was so bloody different. As if he deserved something. And at that point, leaving school, Vince had been told in no uncertain terms by his father: ‘You are just like everyone else. Get your act together and believe it.’ Vince was shocked. Really shocked. He knew his dad thought like this, but at the same time to hear it put into words was crushing. Especially the night before he caught the bright pink Primrose coach to Lancaster for the first time. His dad was trying to make him feel just as good as everyone else, as good as all the new people he’d meet. But Vince didn’t want that at all. One of the last things his mam had said to him, maybe the last thing ever as she went, kissing him and shouldering her handbag, was: ‘You are like no one else in the world. You’re more special. And you never have to do anything you don’t want.’ His dad had never heard this, but Vince had nursed her words to him like a parting gift. It was only rarely he thought they’d done more harm than good.
The fond memories he dredged up were to counteract the anxiety. He thought about broaching the idea of living together with Andy and this led to remembering the weeks they had spent together when they could. A week in Stratford once, and one in Windermere. They’d grown tetchy and difficult with each other. Vince had slept through and laughed about Andy electrocuting himself in the middle of the night, spilling a cup of cold tea on a bedside lamp. ‘I went off with a bloody bang and you never noticed!’ Andy complained. And then, one night after Macbeth in Stratford, Vince woke up in their bed-and-breakfast room, straddling Andy and
