I understood why he was finding it hard to believe that his son, who he clearly loved, would voluntarily choose to leave the family home.
“Okay,” I said, deciding to run with it. “Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt him? Or persuade him to leave his home?”
They both looked startled at that, and Grace stuttered over her words as she said, “He’s just a child. Why would anyone want to hurt him?”
“I’m not saying that they do,” I said hurriedly. “I was only-”
“What about that boy?” Alex said abruptly, and I straightened up in my seat.
“What boy?” Grace turned to her husband and raised her eyebrows.
“That really pale blond one. He looked almost albino or something.” He grimaced like he’d tasted something bad as he went on to say, “And he had one of those ugly little lip rings.”
Grace blinked. “Ali’s new friend? What about him?”
“He looked eighteen, Grace. What does he want with a fourteen-year-old? That’s what I thought. I didn’t like him one bit.”
“Honey, you only saw him for a few seconds. He seemed like a nice boy when he had dinner with us. You were working, remember?”
Alex glanced back over at Stephen and me like he just remembered that we were there.
“It’s strange, though, right?” he said, appealing to us. “At that age, kids usually stay within their age group, don’t they?”
“What was his name?” I asked, rather than agree or disagree with Alex’s question. I didn’t want to take sides with the couple, and really I couldn’t say whether this older boy was significant or not without knowing anything about him.
Alex looked stumped and turned to his wife, who sent him an unimpressed look.
“His name was Jules,” she said matter-of-factly, “but I really can’t see that he did anything to harm Ali. He really seemed like a sweet kid, polite and chatty. He offered to do the washing up, too.” She gave a tight laugh. “What seventeen-year-old does that, right?”
“Exactly,” Alex grunted. In response to his wife’s sharp look, he avoided her gaze and buckled down stubbornly. “Well, he wanted to charm you, didn’t he?”
“For goodness’ sake, Alex,” Grace said, “you can’t point fingers at every teenager out there just because you’re feeling guilty.”
“I’m not feeling guilty!”
They were both vibrating with tension, and I leaned forwards, planning to cut in and stop the argument from escalating, but Grace spoke before I could.
“You’re hardly here,” she hissed. “Ali going missing is the first time you’ve taken time off work for more than a couple of days in months! Years, even, I don’t know. You’re blaming some teenager who looked at you funny because you blame yourself.”
“I don’t-”
“If there was something wrong with him, you wouldn’t know it, would you?”
Before Alex could lash out with a response, I cleared my throat pointedly and cut in.
“This is a very stressful time for you both,” I said firmly. “But this isn’t productive to helping find Alistair.”
Both parents sat back, looking shamefaced and angry, still. I didn’t like it, but I guessed that this argument would continue after Stephen and I had left. Perhaps that’s why Alistair left, I thought privately, because his parents were frequently arguing. But it wasn’t fair to assume that based on one conversation.
“Was there anyone else in Alistair’s life who might have influenced him? Teachers, family friends? Anyone he’s close to and in regular contact with?”
“Influenced him? To run away? Why would they have done that?”
“I don’t know,” I said patiently. “But it’s always useful to look at the people around the child, in cases like this. Alistair might have gone to one of them, too.”
“We’ve called round everyone we could think of,” Grace said miserably. “But, well, he spends a lot of time with his granddad, I suppose.”
The pair went on to list anyone who normally spent time with Alistair and stiltedly answered the rest of our questions. The answers they gave us were mundane and didn’t give us much information of significance to work with. We excused ourselves after another half-hour of talking, and Alex and Grace saw us off at the door, the tension between them thick enough that it seemed to add a weight to the air.
Stephen and I walked down to their garden gate in silence and pulled the car doors open. It was too hot to get in after the car had been sitting in the sun for an hour, and I left the door open, letting it air for a minute. When I glanced over at the house, Alistair’s parents had gone back inside.
“What did you think?” I asked Stephen as we waited.
“Of the parents?” He shrugged. “They could be on the verge of divorce or just badly stressed because of the situation. It’s hard to tell.”
“Right,” I sighed. “It felt like an argument that had happened before, but who knows.”
“And that kid they were talking about? Do you think he’s relevant at all?”
“Jules? At this point, who knows. If he was older and a particularly new friend, then I suppose it’s possible. Grace seemed certain he wasn’t involved, though.”
The car had cooled off enough for us to climb in, and I blasted the air con as Stephen drove us back to the station.
“What’s the plan now, boss?”
“We’ll write up what we talked to them about,” I decided. Stephen had a half-empty packet of chewing gum in his glove box, and I took a couple, savouring the mint freshness as my hot skin cooled down. “I’ll have a look into this ‘Jules’ boy, and you can research whatever else takes your fancy. Whether the two of them have filed for divorce would be a good start. Sound okay?”
“Sounds good,” he agreed. “Though I don’t know what you’ll find on the teenager with just a first name to go on.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said but agreed with him that the chances of anything coming from the search seemed pretty slim.
We worked into the late afternoon,
