`What about Michael? Have you found him?'
She shakes her head. `No. I'm afraid we haven't.' She can see the journalist eyeing them with interest, and she drops her voice. `Seriously, I think it would be better to talk about this somewhere else.'
He stares at her a moment, nonplussed, then, `Sure. OK. If you think that's best.'
The cafe is only a few yards away up towards Carfax and it's all but empty. They're on the point of closing. Somer buys the coffees, waving away Esmond's offer to pay, and they take a table in the window, looking up towards Christ Church cathedral, floodlit against the sallow grey sky. There's rain in the air.
`So,' says Esmond, sitting forward in his chair, his face anxious. `What can you tell me?'
She sighs. `Very little, I'm afraid. We've made every possible effort to find your brother but we're getting absolutely nowhere. Is there anything you can think of `“ anything that's occurred to you since we last spoke `“ anything at all that could help us?'
He shakes his head. `I've been racking my brains, but really, there's nothing. We weren't exactly close `“ I mean, I loved him `“ he was my kid brother `“ but there's been a lot of water under the bridge one way or another.'
The cafe door opens and a mother struggles in with a baby in a pushchair and a little boy holding tight to her coat, one finger in his mouth. The children are younger than Michael Esmond's, but not by much. Philip shuts his eyes briefly then turns back to face Somer.
`What can I do? I must be able to do something.'
`Perhaps you could talk to your mother? We've tried but I'm sure it would be better coming from someone she knows.'
Philip nods. `Yes. I'm sure you're right. First thing tomorrow, I'll go down there.' He picks up his spoon and starts fiddling with it. `I need to go anyway. Not just to see her. I have to talk to her about the funerals. Though I doubt she'll be in any state to come.'
Somer nods. That's pretty much what Ev said.
`I suppose I'll have to see the Giffords as well.'
`You don't get on?'
He lets the spoon fall with a clatter. `Oh, that's not really it. I hardly know them, to be honest. But Mike always found them a bit overbearing. Well, him, anyway. I think he got on OK with Laura.' He glances up and sees her face. `Don't worry. I'm not about to make things any worse than they already are. For them or for me.'
When I get home, the house seems doubly empty. It shouldn't make a difference, but it does: knowing Alex has been here so recently, but isn't here now. I can even smell her perfume. Or perhaps that's just my mind playing tricks on me. Wishful thinking.
There's half a pizza in the freezer and half a bottle of red in the fridge, so that's my evening taken care of. I stick the pizza in the microwave and go round closing the curtains. I'm uncomfortably aware that I'm turning into my own father. He drove us mad in the winter `“ every morning, like clockwork, going from room to room with a cloth, wiping the windows for condensation. Though I tell myself I'm not quite that programmed. Not yet.
In the sitting room, I stop for a moment, aware that something's out of place. I haven't been in this room for a few days `“ not since Somer was here. And that must be what it is. When she was clearing up she must have moved things about. Not much, but enough for me to notice. And now it's obvious: the photographs on the mantelpiece are in a different order. I have a sudden mental image of her standing where I am now, looking at the pictures, seeing the private part of my life for the first time. Our wedding: Alex in a long tight-fitting ivory satin gown that literally took my breath away when I turned to see her at the end of the aisle. Our honeymoon in Sicily: tanned, happy, sharing a bottle of champagne against the sunset at Agrigento. And Jake. Of course, Jake. As a baby; on his first day at school; on the beach, with a sandcastle it took him all day to build. He'd be twelve now. At senior school. He wouldn't be building sandcastles any more. He'd be starting to fret about girls.
We have one of those software programs at CID `“ the ones they use to age photos of missing children. Alex asked me, once, to put a picture of Jake through it, but I said I couldn't `“ that they log each use and in any case it wouldn't be ethical. What I didn't tell her was that I'd already done it. One night, after everyone else had gone home. It was the picture I took two weeks before he died. So close up you can see the fine down on his upper lip. A moment before he'd been frowning and the camera has captured the ghost of it: the shadow of a furrow between his brows, his dark eyes still thoughtful. I've wondered, since, if he was already planning it `“ if he knew by then what he was going to do. The doctors told us it was unlikely `“ that children who take their own lives so young, rarely think about it so far in advance. Even so, the picture still gives me pain. Perhaps that's why I chose that one to put through the software. And it was eerie, sitting there, in the darkened empty room, watching that precious face lengthening, the soft contours hardening. I saw him at fifteen, twenty, thirty-five. I saw how he would have looked when he became a man, when he made me a grandfather. I saw him at the age I am now. The real boy may be frozen in time, but in my mind he and I are growing old together, hand in hand.
The following morning's meeting takes no more than ten minutes. The case is turning ground-hog now. Round and round and round we go. Dead ends, false starts, blind alleys. Paperwork, legwork, phonework. Though we do have one new angle: the Esmond financials have finally come through. And as Gislingham always says, if it's not love, it's money `“ though unfortunately for Baxter, money's a lot less interesting to investigate. When I look into the incident room later he has his chin resting on one hand, staring at his computer screen. And beside him there's a coffee and one of those chocolate bars his wife doesn't know he's still eating. But I won't tell if you don't.
At 9.45 a.m. Quinn kicks open the door to Esmond's study and dumps his bag on the floor. This time he's fully prepared. Not just more pods for the coffee machine, but an almond croissant from the French patisserie in Summertown and a sandwich in case he gets peckish. As he stands making the espresso, he can hear the clatter of rubble as the investigators tip debris into wheelbarrows and cart it away. The sky is bright and there's even some doomed blossom on the trees, but he's bloody glad he's in here in the warm and not outside freezing his balls off and up to his knees in crap. The only thing he's going to have to contend with is boredom: Esmond was obviously one of those people who file every bit of paper they're ever handed. There are till receipts and card statements in bulldog clips, organized by month, and utilities bills and council tax arranged by year. There's even a box file with family photo albums and some of Esmond's old essays and school reports from the Griffin. According to his fourth-form history teacher he was already `driven and uncompromising' when he was fourteen, and by the time he was doing A levels the woman who taught him geography was referring to him as `pushing himself, if anything, a little too hard'. Which chimes pretty well with the man Annabel Jordan described.
Quinn digs a little deeper into the box and finds a ring binder from what must have been Esmond's first year at the school. The first sheet is headed up `My Family'. Intrigued, Quinn takes it out, leans back in his chair and starts to read.
My Family
I think family is very important. It's important to know where you come from. I am very proud of my family. It goes back to Victorian times. My great-grandfather came to England from Poland. His name was ZACHARJASZ ELSZTEJN. He came here because he wanted to be a success. He had a dream that he would have his own company and make a lot of money. He started a jewelry jewellery shop in the East End of London. It was called Zachary Esmond and Son. He had to change his name because no one in England knew how to spell the other one. He bought two more shops to start with and then he bought another one in Nightsbridge Knightsbridge. It was near Harrods. It was very small but it was in a good place. After that he was very successful. My father has a gold watch that belonged to my great-grandfather. It is a big watch with a chain. You don't wear it on your wrist like now. It has a motto on it in Polish. It says `Blizsza koszula ciału'. In English that is `the body is closest to the shirt'. My Dad says it means that the things that are closest to us are the most important, and family is the most important of all.