Smoke and Mirrors (4 page)

‘We’ll all keep looking,’ said Reg. ‘It’s what we might find that scares me.’

There was no answer to this. Edgar said goodbye and made his way seven doors up the road to the Francis house.

*

Bob and Emma were looking back through yesterday’s witness statements. It was Emma’s idea. Bob had wanted to go back out, to search the park, to join the army team on the race hill, but Emma insisted. ‘This is more useful. Anyone can dig through the snow. This is using our brains.’

‘I suppose you’d know all about that.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing.’

Bob looked back at the papers on the desk, some in Emma’s neat hand, some in his sprawling capitals. He didn’t know why Emma made him feel stupid but she just did. Maybe it was her voice, quiet but somehow confident, or maybe it was just the way that her hair was never untidy, her nose never ran, her shoes were always polished. Not that she was smartly dressed. Bob liked girls to look like girls; he particularly liked the skirts that were coming into fashion now with the nipped-in waists and stiff petticoats. Emma wore tweed and grey flannel and she often wore slacks. Today, he supposed, that was allowable but as a rule he didn’t like women wearing trousers (he would be horrified to realise that he had inherited this prejudice from his Methodist minister father).

Emma was writing notes, her hair falling forwards over her face. Even her hair was slightly too short, although he supposed it was a nice colour. He thought of her at the school, sitting on the floor with the children and chatting to them about the snow. She’d certainly got a lot out of them.

Her thoughts must have been running along the same lines because she said, ‘Thank you for saying that to the DI. About me being good with the children.’

‘Well, you were.’

He wanted to ask if she had younger brothers and sisters but it seemed too intrusive somehow. There was something about Emma, something guarded and cool, that prevented you getting too close, like Snow White in her glass coffin (he had been to see the film with his mother during the war and it had had a great effect on him; he had had nightmares about the huntsman for weeks). He knew Emma lived in Brighton but that was all. Did she share a flat with other glossy, confident girls, the way they did nowadays, or was she living on her own? Bob had a room at the top of a tall, gloomy house on Third Avenue. He never asked himself if he was lonely because he was afraid of the answer.

‘Are you writing up today’s interviews?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I’m sure the plays and the acting are important somehow.’

‘Weird about the bloke with the theatre in his garage.’

‘Yes.’ She had her prim look on. ‘We’ve got no reason to suspect him though.’

‘Except he knew both children and he’s a weirdo.’

Emma said nothing and for a few moments the only sounds in the room were the pipes gurgling and Emma’s pen scratching. Bob was looking through the witness statements.

‘The boy who saw the children arguing . . .’

‘Arthur Bates?’

‘Yes. Do we have an address for him?’

Emma checked her notebook. ‘Queen’s Park Road.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘The other side of the park. It’s posher than Freshfield Road.’

Bob made a note. ‘Have you always lived in Brighton?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I was born here.’

‘What was it like here in the war?’

‘Not much fun. There was barbed wire along the beach. Lots of soldiers and sailors everywhere. I didn’t see too much of it. I was evacuated to the Lake District.’

‘Were you? Did Brighton get bombed then?’

‘No, but they always thought it would be.’

‘They got Maidstone a few times. I remember Mill Street being bombed and going with my brother to look in the rubble.’

‘Have you got lots of brothers and sisters?’

‘Two older brothers. Archie was in the RAF, hell of a fellow. Colin’s only a year older than me. He’s a draughtsman. What about you?’

‘I’m an only child.’

She said it in her closing-down-the-conversation voice. Bob took the hint. ‘Might be worth going to see young Arthur again,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

*

Sandra Francis opened the door immediately. She too was hoping for news. Her husband, Jim, was also out searching.

‘He won’t stop until the light fades,’ said Sandra. ‘That’s the sort of man he is.’

She didn’t say this admiringly, more with a sort of weary knowledge of her spouse. What sort of a man was Jim Francis? thought Edgar. When he first met him, on the day of the children’s disappearance, he’d thought him an unlikely partner for the careworn yet obviously genteel Sandra Francis. Jim was a big man, handsome in a rock-like way. Maybe this was what had originally attracted Sandra. Jim hadn’t spoken much, then or since, but there was no doubt that he was an indefatigable searcher; he’d been out all night on Monday and Tuesday, despite the snow that fell in the early hours of Tuesday. He had more stamina than thin Reg Webster – he would probably search all Wednesday night too. Was he also violent, this strong untiring man? But Edna Webster had intimated that Sandra was the strict one. Edgar remembered her saying, that first night, ‘I wanted to give Annie a good hiding.’ He’d dismissed it then but maybe he was wrong to do so.

Sandra was definitely not forthcoming today. She had the baby on her hip and responded to Edgar’s questions mechanically. Annie was a good girl and always helped in the house. She was good with the little ones, always telling them stories and suchlike. No, not really motherly, more . . . well, more like a little teacher really. Yes, she was good at school. Passed her eleven-plus, always kept up with her homework. She was close to her grandma and granddad. She liked going to their house. Granddad had been a teacher so they got on really well, talking about books and that. She did think of being a teacher herself once but she met Jim and well, that was that. Uncle Brian? She’d met him a couple of times but she didn’t think that Annie was especially close to him. All the children knew him. He was just that sort of man. What sort of man was that? Oh, you know, didn’t have children himself but liked to see them around. Kind, that’s what he was.

Edgar left the house feeling that he had learnt nothing new. Annie was a clever girl, obviously more at home in the neat Hove flat than in the crowded terraced house in Freshfield Road. But she helped with her little brothers and sister, did her homework and generally got on with things. She gravitated towards people like her grandfather and Brian Baxter, adults who had time for her. If she had any worries, she probably told them to Mark, who, as his mother put it, knew how to keep a secret.

At the bottom of the hill he met the jeep and was happy to hitch a lift. It was only four o’clock but already growing dark. The driver, a bald man with sergeant stripes, greeted him with, ‘What do you reckon then? We’ve looked all round the park and up by the racecourse. They’re not anywhere round here. You think someone’s kidnapped them?’

‘Why do you say that?’

The big man shrugged. ‘It’s what people are saying, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ Edgar made a mental note to talk to the PCs who’d been in the search party. It was the first time that he’d heard anyone mention kidnapping.

‘Who’d do something like that to a kiddie?’ said the sergeant. ‘They must be sick in their heads.’

Edgar said nothing. He felt chilled to the bone and not just from the cold. Either the children were dead from exposure or they were in the hands of someone ‘sick in their head’. In a few hours’ time, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, he was sure he’d have to go into Edna Webster’s house with Mark grinning gap-toothed from the mantelpiece and tell her that her son was dead.

The roads around the hospital were clear but Kemp Town was a no-go zone, the narrow streets clogged with snow and stationary vehicles. The jeep bumped its way down to the coast road.

‘I can walk from here,’ said Edgar. ‘You get back to the barracks. You’ve been really helpful. Thank you.’

The sergeant gave him a salute that was only half ironical. Edgar forgot to salute back. The army seemed a lifetime away.

He set off, keeping the railings on his left. He couldn’t see the sea but he knew it was there, whispering against the shingle. In Norway, the sea itself had frozen, fossilised into great stone waves. At least it wasn’t that cold. One day he might even feel his feet again.

The coast road was deserted, the Christmas lights between the lampposts casting little pools of coloured light, blue, green and red. What sort of a Christmas would the Webster and Francis families have? Come to that, what sort of Christmas would he have?

He was nearly at the pier when a figure appeared suddenly out of the gloom. A tall shape in a trilby hat and voluminous overcoat. There was something incredibly familiar about it.

‘Max?’ said Edgar.

‘Bloody hell. Is that you, Ed?’ Max approached the streetlight. As ever, he looked as if he’d just stepped out from a London club, elegant and debonair, hat at an angle. Edgar looked downwards.

‘You’re wearing gumboots.’

‘A present from my landlady. Apparently they belonged to her dead husband. What are you doing, tramping along in the snow?’

‘I’ve been searching for some missing children.’

‘I know,’ said Max. ‘I read about it.’

Edgar was surprised. He never thought of Max as reading anything beyond his own notices. It touched him somehow.

‘Any news?’ Max asked.

‘No. I’m on my way back to the station.’

‘I’ve got digs at Upper Rock Gardens.’

There was a tiny, awkward pause. Edgar wanted to ask Max to walk back with him, wanted to enjoy a few moments talking to someone who wasn’t involved with the case. But it was a filthy night, he ought to let Max get back to his digs. Besides, he didn’t want to get onto the subject of Ruby.

He realised that Max was holding out a silver flask. ‘Brandy,’ he said. ‘All the St Bernards carry it.’

‘I can’t,’ said Edgar. ‘I’m on duty. I’ll probably be on duty all night.’

‘Oh, go on.’

Edgar took a sip and felt the warmth flooding through his body. Those dogs knew a thing or two.

‘Have you been rehearsing?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Max. ‘We open at the weekend.’

Edgar thought of Brian telling him that he’d planned to take Annie and Mark to the pantomime. She would have enjoyed that, the stage-struck Annie. He imagined her sitting wide-eyed in the front row, watching Max conjuring genies from thin air.

‘I’ve got a free morning tomorrow,’ said Max. ‘Why don’t we meet for a drink?’

‘I’ll be working,’ said Edgar.

‘Coffee then. Midday. I’ll come to the station.’

This was a definite concession. Max hated the police and, indeed, authority of all kinds.

‘That would be great. See you then.’

‘Bye, Ed.’

He looked back once and saw Max still standing under the lamppost, the cigarette in his mouth glowing like a burning ember.

Edgar stayed at his desk all night. The search was called off when the light faded but Edgar knew that the parents would not sleep while their children were still lost, and neither would he. He sat in the CID room in his little circle of light reading through all the notes on the case. Somewhere, he knew, there would be a clue that led him to Annie and Mark.

Who’d do something like that to a kiddie?

Sometimes she says she doesn’t want to go home.

Children, children, say your prayers. Children, children, stay upstairs.

He heard Annie say that Mark should ‘go back to primary school’.

It was called
The Stolen Children.

I was going to take them to the pantomime next week.

The room was deathly cold in the early hours of the morning. Edgar was wearing his coat and fur hat but he was still freezing. He remembered seeing a two-bar electric fire somewhere. Was it in the reception area? He decided to go and look. It would do him good to get some circulation going in his legs.

The police station at Bartholomew Square was over a hundred years old, but the solid Victorian edifice squatted on top of something much older. There had once been a monastery on the site and, on rainy nights, you could still hear the water rushing into the well below the cellars. There were ghosts too – the usual monks and bricked-up nuns but also the spectre of Henry Solomon, a former chief constable, killed as he interrogated a suspect in one of the upper rooms. Edgar, hurrying along the dark corridors, thought of these former inhabitants with something almost approaching affection. They were company, at least. Please, he prayed to Chief Constable Solomon and the unnamed monks, please help me find the children. But the low ceilings and heavy brick walls gave nothing away. Everything was silent, waiting. Even the rodents that usually scuttered along the skirting boards appeared to be asleep.

He found the electric fire in the reception area and decided to stay there for a while. At least there was some light here, even though it was rather eerie and blue, the lamp above the porch reflecting the snowy street. He switched on the fire and pulled it as close to the desk as he could.

What would his mother think, if she could see him? It would probably confirm her belief that he should never have joined the police, that he should have gone into some comfortable white-collar job with luncheon vouchers and the possibility of a pension. It was for this that she had made him stay inside and do his homework rather than playing in the street with the other children, not so that he could go to Oxford. ‘People like us don’t get degrees,’ she said when he got the letter with the Balliol crest. Well, Oxford had only lasted two terms because of the war, and afterwards he had just felt too old to go back to university, though many people did. He had argued with Max about it, he remembered, in the bar at Victoria Station, Edgar saying pompously that he wanted to do a job where he could help other people. Max had retorted that he, for one, was going back to his old life and was never going to think of anyone else again.

Maybe it was the cold that was making him think of his childhood. One of his earliest memories was of lying in bed in the house in Willesden watching his breath billow around him and wondering if he was on fire. Jonathan was in bed next to him but he had been very little, probably only a toddler, and so too young to be any comfort. The downstairs of that house had been fairly warm, with open fires in the kitchen and front room, but upstairs was arctic. Just getting out of bed was a trauma, your feet freezing as they touched the floorboards. Lucy was always suffering from chilblains. They had moved from Willesden to the bungalow in Esher when Edgar was ten, Lucy eight and Jonathan five. For Edgar’s mother, Rose, the move meant she’d arrived: central heating, fitted carpets, tiled bathroom. But it had seemed a flimsy, shoddy place to Edgar, not substantial enough to be a home somehow. The terraced house in Willesden had been home, solid, unmoving, comfortable in a stern, parental way. But all the years that Edgar had lived in Esher he had never felt that he really belonged there. Perhaps that was why he visited so seldom now, even though Rose was alone in the house; her husband dead, Jonathan dead, Lucy married, Edgar selfishly pursuing his own life.

He could feel his head drooping forwards. He mustn’t go to sleep. Memory shifts and he’s at Oxford, coming home after an all-night party. That heightened sense of reality, the honey-coloured buildings and soft ochre river more beautiful than ever. He could be there now, fast asleep in his rooms facing the quad, or even in a little house in Jericho with a wife asleep beside him. He had gone into the police because he wanted to do some good, because life had become very serious and the thought of going back to academic research while his brother and the woman he had loved lay dead seemed self-indulgent and pointless. But was he doing any good now, sitting at a desk waiting for bad news to come, powerless to prevent it?

He must have fallen asleep. He dreamt of ice floes, of Jonathan lying asleep, of faces looking up from frozen water, of a puppet theatre, of a child with an adult’s face, of hands reaching up and voices calling.
Children, children, say your prayers. Children, children, stay upstairs.

He woke with a start. The phone was ringing and sparks were coming from the fire. It was still dark outside but the clock on the wall said six-thirty. Edgar unplugged the fire and picked up the receiver. It was a police officer from the station in Hove. An early-morning dog-walker had found two bodies on Devil’s Dyke. He thought they were children.

Edgar leant back in his chair and let out a long sigh.

*

Edgar went to the lock-up garage where the police cars were kept. The street outside had been cleared and there had been no more snow in the night but everything was covered in a fine layer of ice. When he finally got a car out, it skidded almost the length of the road and came to rest by a milk float. The milkman, a hardy figure in an immense sheepskin coat, helped him get the car pointing the right way and Edgar set off, slower this time, keeping to the main roads. It was seven o’clock and the sun was just coming up over the downs.

He’d rung Bob and Emma and told them the news. ‘Go to the station,’ he’d said. ‘There’s no point in us all trekking up to the Dyke.’ He wondered if he was trying to save them the sight that awaited him.

Devil’s Dyke was a beauty spot on the outskirts of Hove, a soaring stretch of downland that must have been used as a beacon and gathering place from the days when the first prehistoric farmers started to clear the land. Archaeologists had found remains of an Iron Age hill fort and a Bronze Age cemetery. In Victorian times there had been a funfair and funicular railway. But the Dyke was also a lonely and ill-starred location. The funfair was disused and a grand hotel, built to cater to visitors, had burnt down in 1945. But on this November morning none of these landmarks were visible. The funfair and the hill fort were all buried under the same smooth white counterpane. Only the ruined hotel remained, a glowering presence to the east.

Two policemen were waiting in the car park and Edgar also recognised the flashy Lagonda owned by Solomon Carter, the police surgeon. He’d called Carter before he’d left but he wondered how he’d got there so quickly.

One of the policeman saluted sharply, though he looked frozen to death.

‘Inspector Stephens? I’m Sergeant Ron Harris. This way.’

Harris led the way along a track leading to a stile. The path had clearly been used, even in the snow, because it was rutted with footprints, both animal and human. Carter got out of his car and followed. Despite everything, Edgar was still irritated to see that he was wearing a fur coat.

The bodies were not far away. They were lying in a shallow ditch just off the main track. Edgar could see marks where the dog must have scrabbled in the piled-up snow.

‘We sent the dog-walker home,’ said Harris. ‘He was frozen and so was his dog. I got a statement though.’

‘Is he local?’

‘Yes, he lives up Preston Park way.’

All this was delaying the inevitable. Edgar knelt and gently pushed away the snow. Harris helped him and, within a few minutes, the bodies lay uncovered. Two children lying as if asleep. Annie’s red hair, shocking against its white pillow. Mark turned towards her as if seeking her protection, his glasses held together with sticking plaster. Edgar heard Carter’s intake of breath and the other policeman blew his noise loudly. Beside him, Harris crossed himself.

‘It’s them then?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Edgar. ‘It’s them.’ He didn’t feel close to tears himself. Right at that moment he felt nothing but rage, no less murderous for being calm. He would find the killer and see them hanged. He would do that or die in the attempt.

‘Cause of death?’ he turned to Carter.

The doctor leant forward. ‘I’d say strangulation. It’s hard to tell because the bodies are so cold but look at the marks around her neck.’

Edgar looked and, as he did so, he saw something else. Something as bright as Annie’s hair, lying just under her curled-up legs. Edgar bent down to look closer.

‘What is it?’ asked Harris.

‘It’s a stick of Brighton rock,’ said Edgar.

*

Max knew something was up as soon as he reached the station. Uniformed policemen were standing around in the reception area and there was the air of suppressed excitement that he associated with first nights. He asked for Edgar and was not surprised to hear that he was unavailable. Standing under the portico lighting a cigarette, he noticed a dogged-looking group of people sheltering in the doorway of the pub opposite. Strolling over, he recognised a reporter from the
Evening Argus
.

‘Hallo, Don. What’s up?’

‘Max Mephisto. What are you doing here?’

‘I asked first.’

‘There’s a rumour that the children’s bodies have been found.’

‘Jesus. Where?’

‘Devil’s Dyke. That’s what I heard.’

‘Dead?’

Don nodded solemnly but his eyes were bright. ‘Looks like we might have a murder on our hands.’

‘Yes, let’s look on the bright side,’ said Max.

He walked back to the station. He’d spotted Bob, Edgar’s gormless-looking sergeant, standing in the doorway talking to a blonde policewoman, the sort who denies their good looks by scraping their hair into a ponytail and not wearing lipstick.

‘Hallo.’ Max raised his hat. ‘I’d arranged to meet Inspector Stephens but I understand that’s impossible now.’

Bob stared at him. He had a round face and a boyish-looking mouth but there was something determined about him all the same. Max could see why Edgar said he’d make a good policeman one day.

‘You’re the magician, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘He’s the guv’nur’s friend,’ Bob said to the woman. ‘They were in the army together.’

The girl looked at him but said nothing. She was harder to read. A cool, arctic face with pale-blue eyes.

‘I hear that the children’s bodies have been found,’ he said.

‘Who told you that?’ Bob looked angrily towards the knot of reporters.

‘We can’t comment,’ the woman cut in quickly.

‘They’re saying they were found in Queen’s Park.’

‘They’re wrong. It was Devil’s Dyke.’

‘I won’t detain you.’ Max raised his hat again in farewell. Really, young people were depressingly stupid sometimes.

*

Max had a trying afternoon at the theatre. Aladdin still didn’t know her lines and Widow Twankey’s face looked suspiciously flushed. Wishy Washy fluffed the business with the ironing board and the Emperor of Peking seemed to have disappeared altogether. The director, Roger Dunkley, was literally tearing at his hair by the end. The author, a nervous-looking young man called Nigel Castle, sat in the front row with his head in his hands.

‘Don’t take it too hard.’ Max strolled downstage during a hiatus involving the Peking police. ‘It’ll be all right on the night.’

Nigel raised a haggard face. ‘Is that really true or is it just what people say?’

‘Well . . .’ Max felt for his cigarettes. ‘It is what people say but there’s a certain truth in it. Most performers are better with an audience.’

‘But my lines.’ The writer seemed almost tearful. ‘I wrote these lines. I wanted it to be different from other pantomimes. You know, really witty, not just old jokes and wordplay, and Denton McGrew just says the lines that he always says every time he plays Widow Twankey.’

Max felt sorry for him. It was true that Nigel’s lines were quite good, a step up from most pantomimes at any rate, and Denton McGrew, a famous Dame but a rather tiresome human being, was enough to try anyone’s patience.

‘The script is excellent,’ he said. ‘You even managed to avoid the one about the Brighton Belle.’

Nigel managed a wan smile. ‘McGrew says it anyway. Everything’s innuendo with him.’

Max remembered hearing a rather good joke about innuendo being an Italian suppository. He decided that now wasn’t the time. He wasn’t really in a joking mood, one way or another. He took out his lighter.

‘Max!’ Roger Dunkley called up from the orchestra pit. ‘No smoking in here. New fire regulations on the pier.’

‘Good God.’ Max replaced the packet. ‘Is nothing sacred?’

Roger came closer. He was a solid man in his late forties but today he looked about a hundred. ‘Do you have any idea what’s happened to Dick Felsing?’

‘Who?’

‘The Emperor of Peking.’

‘No. Sorry. Maybe he’s just forgotten the rehearsal.’ The Emperor, an aged character actor, was notoriously absent-minded.

Roger groaned. ‘That’s all I need.’

‘Old age. Forgetfulness. It comes to us all.’

‘Oh yes?’ Roger nodded sourly towards Annette Anthony, the actress playing Aladdin. ‘Then what’s her excuse? She forgot her name a moment ago. Thought she was Red Bloody Riding Hood.’

*

It was dark by the time Max left the pier. The snow had stopped but the pavements were icy and treacherous. He walked in the road for most of the way. There still weren’t many cars about. One double-decker bus did brave the coast road, swaying like an ocean-going liner, its illuminated interior strangely comforting in the darkness. Max wondered what it would be like to hail the bus and be driven away, somewhere, anywhere. He imagined that was what Edgar felt like at the moment. But no, Edgar would be doggedly setting about the task of finding the killer. Escape wouldn’t be an option for him. He was tough, Edgar, tougher than he looked. Just as well really.