“What about her?” Chubb lock against her back, holding tight to Emily’s hand.
“I saw her.”
“Yes, the other Sunday.”
“No. Now.” Emily pointing towards the door, Lorraine scooping her up into her arms, “Nonsense, sweetheart, you just imagined it,” sweeping her through to the rear of the house.
The noise would have been enough to shatter the plaster from the walls, if it hadn’t been for over a decade’s cigarette smoke and nicotine holding it glued together. Residents had long since given up complaining; turned up their TV sets, their stereos, instead; arranged their nights out around the pub’s live music. Tonight was blues night: take your basic three chords and a few flourishes and process them through the amps at a volume that defied criticism.
Naylor made it back through the packed bar without spilling more than a few inches from each pint glass.
“What’s this?” Divine shouted over the din. “You order halves?”
If he heard, Naylor chose to offer no comment. He squeezed back alongside Divine, sharing his section of the bench seat with a broad-faced Rastafarian and a scrawny student type, sporting a string of political badges, a wisp of beard and a navy blue peaked cap that sat sideways on his head.
“What the hell we doing here?” Naylor asked.
“Keeping our eyes open, remember?”
A month before the drugs squad had intercepted a couple of padded envelopes on their way to a known dealer who lived above a video shop off the Alfreton Road. One appeared to have been posted in Canada, the other in Japan; the original source of both turned out to be Pakistan. Bribe a few officials, infiltrate them into the postal system as if they had started out in countries which aroused little Customs and Excise suspicion-bingo! your friendly, international mail-order drug company. While Interpol and the National Drugs Unit were hauling in the bigger fish, Naylor and Divine were supping dubious bitter and watching out for a few minnows.
It didn’t look as if it were going to be one of their nights.
“If that fat bastard,” Divine yelled in Naylor’s ear, indicating the middle-aged white man at the piano, “sings another word about going to Chicago, I’m going to take him down the station personally, stick him on the fucking train.”
They left thirty minutes short of closing, sound ringing in their ears.
“Fancy anything?” Divine asked, eyes on the kebab place across the street.
Naylor shook his head. “Got to get home.”
“Debbie waiting up for you?”
Naylor shrugged.
“Better still,” Divine winked, “waiting in bed.”
Naylor had left his car at the station; he knew he probably shouldn’t be driving, leave it there till morning, take a cab. What the hell! Lights shone from the first-floor windows and for half a moment, Naylor considered going back in, passing the time, make himself a coffee, black. Instead he backed the car out onto the road and headed for home.
Only the small light burned above the front door. There was a pint of milk open in the fridge and Naylor drank it right down, scarcely moving the carton away from his lips for air. He thought about opening another, making himself some cereal. Inside a bowl, covered over with a small plate, there was some tuna and he took that through into the front room and switched on the TV, volume low. Faces snarled at one another from banked rows of seats, a serious political presenter egging them on. Asian men and women in black and white costumes and subtitles, talking, talking, talking. Soccer Special. Newsnight. He switched the set to an empty channel and finished his flakes of tuna, staring at the moving speckles of the screen, listening to the hum.
“Wife okay? Baby?”
As far as he knew, they were fine.
Thirteen
Raymond lay there, that narrow bed in his twelve by fourteen room, seeped in semen and his own stale sweat, trying not to think about the girl. Smiling face and the bright hair and the slightly chubby hands that seemed eager always to reach out and touch.
“Ray-o!”
Sitting on the wall outside the pub, he had told her his name, his nickname, and she had shrieked it aloud, gleeful, her whole body shaking as she danced up and around.
“Ray-o! Ray-o! Ray-o!”
Without thinking he had whisked her off her feet and whirled her round, like a carousel at Goose Fair, round and round until he lowered her gradually down, laughing and shaking, excitement tinged with fear. The next time he saw her, days later, she had tugged at her nan’s hand and pointed across the street-“Ray-o!”-and he had quickly waved and walked on.
Now he threw back the blanket and the skimpy sheet and pulled on a T-shirt and yesterday’s pair of pants before climbing to the bathroom, not yet light.
When he left the house fifty minutes later, leaving through the back door, careful to avoid the dog shit on the square of weed and grass, the rawness of the air took him by surprise. He had no sense of the black Sierra, parked among others at an angle to the road, no awareness of the camera focusing over inches of wound-down window, his steps along the pavement masking its whir and click.
“I wonder if you recognize him, Mrs. Summers?”
Lynn Kellogg spread the prints across the table, a group of hastily processed ten by eights, the central one, the close-up, sharp enough, though, to pick out the ghost of the subject’s breath as it left his mouth.
“Oh, yes,” Edith Summers said. “It’s that boy.”
“Boy?”
“The one Gloria took such a shine too.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Ray-o.”
“That’s his name?”
“It’s what she called him, Gloria. Raymond, I suppose his real name was. Ray. He was a nice enough lad, not like some.”
As Lynn had been driving into Mablethorpe a burst of sun shocking in its brightness, had split the clouds that had hung over her the length of the journey. Edith Summers had been outside at the front of the bungalow, sweeping the short path that led from the gate with a long-handled brush. She had insisted on opening a new packet of digestives, brewing tea.
“What did you mean, Mrs. Summers,” Lynn asked, “when you said Gloria took a shine to Raymond?”
“Oh, you know, she would chatter on about him sometimes, she seemed to get a kick out of seeing him, I suppose that’s what it was. I mean, Raymond, he would make a point of calling out to her if ever he saw her, waving and that. Playing the fool.”
“Where was this, Mrs. Summers?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When Gloria and Raymond saw one another, where would this be?”
“Out round the boulevard, down by the school. Sometimes, the rec.”
“The recreation ground?”
“Yes, he was there sometimes.”
“With friends?”
“No. Least, I don’t think so. On his own, more like. As I recall, he always was. I never remember seeing him with anyone else.”
“And he would be where, the times you saw him in the rec?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Why? Why does this all matter anyhow?”
“Near the swings?”
“Yes, I daresay he might have been near the swings. But …”
“And did you notice him being friendly with any other little girls by the swings, or …?”
“Now, look …”
“Or was it just Gloria?”
“Look, I’m not daft, I can see what you’re thinking. What you’re saying.”
“Mrs. Summers, I’m not saying …”
“Yes.”
“All I’m interested in doing …”
“Yes, I know.”
“If he took a special interest in Gloria, if she trusted him …”
“Look, I’ve told you. He was a nice boy, a nice young man. Polite. What you’re suggesting …”
“The day you left Gloria playing on the swings, Mrs. Summers, the day she went missing, you can’t remember seeing Raymond there then?”
“No.”
“You can’t remember for sure, or …?”
“No, he wasn’t there.”
“You’re certain of that?”