“Claimed?” Barbara Havers asked. She’d remained in the doorway, and she was writing in her new spiral notebook.
“He was meant to come to our fish stall in Chapel Market one day,” Bev explained. “To help his dad. When he didn’t come, he said he’d gone to tae kwon do and lost the time. There’s a bloke he’s had some trouble with-”
“Andy Crickleworth,” Max put in. “Little sod’s trying to sort Davey out and set himself up as head of the crew Davey runs with.”
“Not a gang,” Bev added hastily. “Just boys. They been mates for ages.”
“But this Crickleworth’s new. When Davey said he wanted to see the tae kwon do, I thought…” Max had been standing, but now he went to the sofa to join his wife. He dropped down onto it and scrubbed his hands across his face. The smaller children reacted to this evidence of their dad’s upset by huddling together at the knees of one of their sisters, who put her hands on their shoulders as if to comfort them. Max brought himself under control, saying, “Tae kwon do people? They never heard of Davey. Never seen him. Didn’t know him. So I phoned the school to see had he been going truant without them telling us, only he hadn’t, see. Today’s the only day he didn’t show up. All term.”
“Has he been in trouble with the police before?” Havers asked. “Ever face the magistrates? Ever been assigned to a young people’s group for straightening him out?”
“Our Davey doesn’t need straightening out,” Bev Benton said. “He never even misses school. And he’s that good in his classes, he is.”
“Doesn’t like anyone to know that, Mum,” Sherry murmured, as if believing her mother had betrayed a confidence in her final remark.
Max added to this. “He was meant to be tough. Tough louts don’t care much for school.”
“So Davey acted the part,” Bev explained. “But he wasn’t like that.”
“And he’s never been in trouble with the police? Never had a social worker?”
“Why d’you keep asking that? Max…” Bev turned to her husband as if for explanation.
Lynley intervened. “Have you phoned his friends? The boys you mentioned?”
“No one’s seen him,” Bev replied.
“And this other boy? This Andy Crickleworth?”
No one in the family had met him. No one in the family even knew where to find him.
“Any chance Davey might’ve made him up?” Havers asked, looking up from her notebook. “Covering for something else he was up to?”
There was a little silence at this. Either no one knew or no one wanted to answer. Lynley waited, curious, and saw Bev Benton glance at her husband. She seemed reluctant to say anything else. Lynley let the silence continue till Max Benton broke it.
“Bullies di’n’t ever go after him, did they. They knew our Davey’d sort them if they picked a fight. He was small and…” Benton seemed to realise he’d slipped into the past tense and he stopped himself, looking shaken. His daughter Sherry supplied the conclusion to his thought.
“Pretty,” she said. “Our Davey’s dead pretty.”
They all were that, Lynley thought: pretty and small, very nearly doll-like. The boys especially would have to do something to compensate for that. Like fight back furiously if someone tried to harm them. Like end up getting bruised and banged about before they were throttled, sliced, and discarded in the woods.
Lynley said, “May we see your son’s bedroom, Mr. Benton?”
“Why?”
“There might be some indication where he’s gone off to,” Havers said. “Sometimes kids don’t tell their parents everything. If there’s a mate you don’t know about…”
Max exchanged a look with his wife. It was the first time he’d seemed anything but master of the family. Bev nodded encouragingly. Max told Lynley and Havers to come with him, then.
He took them upstairs where three bedrooms opened onto a simple square landing. In one of the rooms, two sets of bunk beds stood against opposite walls, a chest of drawers between them. Over one of the bed sets a shelf high on the wall held a collection of CDs and a small, neat stack of baseball caps. Beneath the upper bed, the lower one had been removed altogether and in its place a private lair had been fashioned. Part of it was given over to clothes: baggy trousers, trainers, jumpers, and T-shirts featuring graphics of the American rap artists Bev Benton had spoken about. Part of it contained a set of cheap metal bookshelves that, upon inspection, held all fantasy novels. At the far end of the lair stood a small chest of drawers. All of this, Max Benton told them, was Davey’s.
As Lynley and Havers ducked within, each of them making for a different part, Max said in a voice no longer authoritarian but instead desperate and very much afraid, “You got to tell me. Wouldn’t be here, would you, unless there was something more. Course I see why you di’n’t want to say in front of the wife and the little ones. But now…They would’ve sent uniforms, not you lot.”
Lynley had slid his hands into the pockets of the first pair of trousers as Max Benton was speaking. He stopped, though, and came back out of the lair as Havers continued searching within it. He said, “You’re right. We have a body, Mr. Benton. It was found in Queen’s Wood, not far from Highgate station.”
Max Benton sagged a little, but he waved Lynley off when Lynley would have taken his arm and led him to the lower of the two beds across the room. He said, “Davey?”
“We’re going to ask you to look at the body. It’s the only way to be absolutely sure. I’m terribly sorry.”
He said again, “Davey?”
“Mr. Benton, it may not be Davey.”
“But you think…Else why would you be troubling to come up here wanting to see his things?”
“Sir…” From within the lair, Havers spoke. Lynley turned to see that she was holding out something for his inspection. It was a set of handcuffs, but not ordinary ones. They were not metal but formed from heavy plastic and in the dim light beneath the upper mattress, the handcuffs glowed. Havers said, “Could be-” But she was cut off by Max Benton, who said harshly, “I told him to return them things. He said he did. Swore to me because he di’n’t want me taking him along to make sure he handed them over.”
“To who?” Havers asked.
“He got ’em off a stall in the Stables Market, di’n’t he. Over by Camden Lock. He said they were a present from a vendor there, but what vendor hands out goods to kids hanging about, you tell me. So I reckoned he nicked them and I told him to take them back straightaway. Little bugger must’ve hid them instead.”
“What stall in the market? Did he tell you?” Lynley asked.
“Magic stall, he said. I don’t know the bloke’s name. He never said and I di’n’t ask. I just told him to take the handcuffs back and to bloody well stop pinching clobber not belonging to him.”
“Magic stall?” Barbara Havers asked. “Are you sure about that, Mr. Benton?”
“That’s what he said.”
Havers came out of the lair then. She said to Lynley, “Could I have a word, sir?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. She left the bedroom and went onto the landing.
She said to Lynley in a quiet, terse voice, “Bloody hell. I may’ve been wrong. Tunnel vision. Whatever you want to call it.”
“Havers, this isn’t the moment for sharing your epiphanies,” Lynley said.
“Wait. I’ve been thinking all along of Colossus. But I never thought of magic. What kid fifteen and under doesn’t like magic? No. Sir. Wait-” as Lynley was about to leave her to her stream-of-consciousness monologue. “Wendy’s Cloud is in Camden Lock Market, right next door to the Stables. Now, she’s hopped up on something much of the time and she can’t say what she’s selling or when she’s selling it. But she’s carried ambergris oil in the past-we know that-and when I finished talking to her the other day and was hiking back to my car, I saw this bloke at the Stables…”