Dorothy followed Vicky inside and Stratton considered joining them. But he decided against it and looked out onto the street.
It was a clean, quiet neighbourhood, the centre surrounded on three sides by well-tended bungalows, the garden dotted with tall, slender palm trees and with a kids’ climbing frame in one corner. It might have been quaint had it not been for the back of a row of unattractive, three-storey non-residential buildings across the street. There was no brickwork anywhere to be seen: all the buildings were less than fifty years old and were made from stuccocoated, earthquake-spec frameworks, wood for the houses, steel for the non-residential places. This was still Santa Monica, some thirty blocks from the ocean and in a nicer part of the sub-city.
It would be dark soon and Stratton directed a thought to where he would stay. But he couldn’t get Josh out of his mind for long enough to think straight. It was safe to assume that getting the boy back to the UK was going to involve a lengthy bureaucratic battle and at some stage Stratton was going to have to call his boss and let him know what he was doing. He told himself he was going to have to be very patient and work with the system, whatever that entailed.
He heard the door close behind him and turned to see Vicky walking back down the steps and onto the path.
‘You were going to tell me about the boy.’
‘No, I wasn’t. Look, I’ve had a long day—’
‘Nothing compared to his,’ Stratton snapped, practically barring her way.
Vicky felt the sting of his sudden attack and looked into his steely eyes. Although she did not feel threatened by him his stare had an intensity she could not ignore.
‘Are you a relative?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘I can’t give information about any child in this centre to anyone other than a close relative or a court-approved guardian. I’m sorry but those are the rules,’ she said, moving past him to open the gate.
‘All I want to know is if he’s okay,’ Stratton said. ‘Why is that breaking any rules?’
It was clear that this guy was not going to give up easily: he was obviously concerned and was not actually asking for very much. ‘There was a young English boy brought in this morning,’ Vicky said, relenting slightly. ‘I don’t know anything about him yet. We’ve had a busy day moving a dozen kids out to new homes and admitting over a dozen more. If he had been physi cally hurt then I would have known about it. Any child brought to us is here for a reason and it’s never good, but I promise you that he’s being well taken care of … Come back tomorrow and I’ll be able to tell you more.’
‘What time?’ Stratton asked, his hand remaining on the gate latch.
‘Not before nine a.m. Does he have any relatives in this country?’
‘No.’
‘Will any be coming over to get him?’
‘He has grandparents, but they’re old – I’m all he’s got right now.’
Vicky nodded, understanding the situation far better than Stratton did. ‘It’s not going to be easy, mister …’
‘For him or for me?’
Stratton saw the irritation return to her face, signalling that he had gone as far as he was going to get. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said as he pushed open the gate for her. ‘Name’s John Stratton.’
Vicky walked through the gate and down the sidewalk, feeling his gaze on her. She concentrated on putting Stratton and the boy out of her thoughts. It had the hallmarks of another difficult case but there were so many. This was just another in an endless line that she had to deal with every day. After ten years as a social worker in the child-protection agency she had almost managed to do what she knew she had to in order to preserve her sanity: disconnect herself from the job as soon as she left work – almost managed, that was. Had she known that it was going to be such a depressing, distressing vocation she might have chosen a far less ‘noble’ line of work after leaving college. Quitting was always an obvious option but even though she had often thought about it, desertion – for that was what it would really have been as far as she was concerned – was not something that she was prepared to contemplate. Only one other way of life was likely ever to get her away from the centre and that was having a child of her own. But that was so far off her life’s radar that it was almost as depressing to think about.
Stratton watched Vicky walk around the corner at the end of the block as he let the gate close behind him, shouldered his pack and headed in the opposite direction. There was clearly scant chance of a taxi coming by in this area so he crossed the road and headed for the corner where another street led to Wilshire Boulevard, a main traffic artery that ran east from the coast and into the heart of Los Angeles.
A few minutes later Stratton was in a taxi, heading for the beach area.
‘Any suggestions for a hotel?’ he asked the taxi driver, an old, mellow man wearing a battered straw hat.
‘How much you wanna pay?’ the man asked in a relaxed Midwestern drawl.
‘What are my options?’
‘You new in town?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you got motels. They’re around fifty bucks a night. Then there’s places along the front. There’re some fancy hotels. Don’t know exactly what they cost but it’s a few hundred dollars, easy. There’s others not so fancy that you can get for something like seventy or so. How long you stayin’ in town for?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘If you’re stayin’ more ’n a week, there’s an apartment building that sometimes does short lets. It’s an old building they did up a few years back. You don’t get room service but they have a launderette and Santa Monica ain’t short o’ good eatin’ places, that’s for sure.’
Stratton was attracted to the idea. The one thing he didn’t like about hotels was the fact that someone came into the room every day. ‘Where are these apartments?’ he asked.
‘Ocean Avenue, on the cliff front. Beach is a minute’s walk.’
‘Can we take a look?’
‘Sure thing.’
The taxi took a left at the lights on Second Street a block before the end of the boulevard, then second right towards Ocean Avenue, the main boulevard running along the top of the tree-lined cliffs. It pulled over in the middle of the block and stopped at the kerb outside a large pink building with a neon sign advertising Pacific Towers Apartments. Stratton paid the man, climbed out with his backpack, and looked up at the sixteen-storey structure.
Stratton walked in through the glass doors of the entrance. A Chinese restaurant took up the ground floor on the left side and he went on through a short lobby and out into an open-air courtyard. The building took up three sides of a square and was open on the beach side. An old, dribbling fountain stood in the centre of the courtyard and a modern health club behind full-length glass windows was located on the right-hand side. Stratton crossed to a corner and went to push through another set of glass doors into what was obviously the reception area but they were locked. He could see a reception desk tucked away in the corner of a small lobby but there was no sign of life.
There was an electronic registry fixed on a wall to one side of the doors with a call button beside a small LED screen. He pushed the button. The screen requested him to enter an apartment number. One of the options he scrolled through was ‘manager’ so he selected it and hit the call button again. A moment later a dial tone purred from the small speaker followed by the electronic beeps of a number being dialled and then a ringing tone.
Seconds later a click was followed by a man’s voice. ‘Manager,’ it announced.
‘Hi. I’m looking for an apartment.’