The Pure in Heart (12 page)

Cat jumped as she nicked the skin of her forefinger with the paring knife. She had been full of admiration. She pressed a piece of clean kitchen
paper on to the small cut. It was hardly bleeding.

She would not watch the six o’clock news.

Mephisto the ginger cat banged in through his flap, startling her.

She got slowly and heavily up from the chair and went into the den where they kept the television.

Barely ten minutes later she returned to the kitchen and to the phone.

‘Everything OK?’

‘I just watched television … the Anguses were
appealing …’

‘Oh my love, you shouldn’t have watched it.’

‘I know.’ Cat pulled the kitchen roll to her and tore off a long strip.

‘How did they seem? No, forget that, stupid question.’

In the background, Cat heard the sound of her sister-in-law’s children’s party. ‘Where are you?’

‘I came into the hall. It’s bedlam.’

‘They looked so awful. I hardly recognised Alan. He looked like the walking
dead … he was seventy not forty-five. There was the most awful expression in his eyes – and hers … sort of wild and yet … I don’t know … as if they had been beaten up and tortured beyond bearing … and yet they were hyper, you know? He was twitching … his mouth, his hands … God, I felt so sorry for them. I wish I could talk to Si but he’ll be unreachable. I wanted to hear you.’

‘I’m here and they’re
fine … and we won’t be any later than we have to.’

‘Don’t go mad, drive carefully, Chris, I –’

‘I always do.’

‘I know. I’m twitchy as well.’

‘Can you get anyone to be with you? Maybe Karin would come back.’

‘No, it isn’t that. It wouldn’t make any difference. I shouldn’t have watched. I can’t get it out of my head … Chris, where is he, what’s happened to him?’

‘I don’t know. But they’ve
half the police force in the county out there looking … in the entire country, come to that.’

‘There is nothing to say they’ll find him.’

‘Cat …’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Have a drink. Won’t hurt at this stage.’

‘I’d be sick.’

‘Cup of tea …’

‘What’s Sam doing?’

‘Hang on, I’ll have a look … He’s sitting on the floor with a brown paper bag on his head. Don’t ask.’

‘OK.’

‘Watch a stupid film … watch
a DVD of
The Office
.’

‘I thought maybe
Carry on Doctor
.’

‘Love you.’

Cat put the phone down and wandered back into the den. It was oddly tidy. The children had not been in it since the previous evening and her daily help had decided to blitz it earlier. She wandered out again, went upstairs, closed the curtains in the bedrooms, opened a cupboard door and looked at the pile of new baby clothes.
Waiting.

Waiting.

She went back to the kitchen.

The faces of Alan and Marilyn Angus were in front of her eyes and at the back of her head, they looked down at her from the ceiling and up from the floor. Cat rested her arms on her stomach.

‘Dear God, help them to find him. Make him safe. Give them strength.’

If she had not been so heavily pregnant and unsafe to drive, she would have gone down
to the cathedral where there was a communion service. Her faith kept her sane, gave her the commitment and strength to do her job. She did not know how Chris managed without it, or her brother, heading the team searching for the missing child. She could not have got through a day without somehow being in touch with it, however fleetingly.

After the appeal for their son by the Anguses, the screen
had been filled with his face, a small, solemn, pale nine-year-old face, a face that was becoming as familiar to everyone in the country as that of their closest loved one, their own child, their neighbour, the Queen, any face they could see when they closed their eyes. David Angus. The face would be on posters in every shop window and noticeboard in Lafferton, at every railway and bus and filling
station.

Cat bent her head and wept.

In the CID room, Nathan wiped his eyes, bleary from trawling through computerised data. It was
seven thirty and the room was full. They had brought in extra officers from outside, another room was being equipped with more computers for the sifting through paedophile records, lists of cars, statements, descriptions, minutiae of forensic evidence from other
cases involving abducted or assaulted children … canteen staff had stayed on duty and others had come back in, Uniform was being strengthened with assistance from outside forces … Nathan looked round the room. In a minute he would go and get a sandwich and a cup of tea and then see if he could be out somewhere, even doing door to door … anything rather than spend another hour staring at a screen.

The atmosphere in the CID room had changed, he thought. He hadn’t known it like this since last year, during the hunt for Freya’s killer. Tension was like an invisible electric wire strung round the room. There was none of the usual banter, no jokes, no small talk. The disappearance of a child focused everyone. They meant to find David Angus. No one talked about finding him dead, though with every
hour that passed the possibility grew like an ugly fungus, taking over the corners of their minds, spreading its spores. Finding the boy and finding who had taken him – that was all that mattered. Any other business, petty burglaries, thefts of car radios, drunk and disorderlies, went to the bottom of the list.

Nathan had been present at the recorded television appeal earlier that day and had
vowed to
stay on duty without a break until the boy was found. The faces of the parents, the cracks in their voices, their odd jerky movements, their eyes … he saw them now, heard them as he went down to the canteen. On the wall, in the corridor and at the door, the posters of David Angus had gone up. Nathan looked into his young face. The face looked back, solemn, still a small boy’s face, soft
and round.

Nathan bought his tea, to have upstairs. The canteen was packed and he didn’t want to take time out to chat. But no one had been chatting, they had been shovelling food into themselves because they had to refuel before carrying on, not spinning out a break, joshing, having a quick fag.

‘Nathan … looking for you. My office.’

The DCI was leaning over the stairwell. Nathan ran, spilling
a thin trail of tea as he went.

‘We’ve had a report of a Jaguar XKV seen cruising a couple of times in Sorrel Drive. Once last week, and then again the day before yesterday. A woman who lives at number 10 – higher up from the Anguses – she rang us after seeing the news appeal.’

‘What’d she mean, “cruising”?’

‘Her word. Going slowly down the road, as if the driver was looking for a house … back
up the other side, never stopping. Then doing it again. Same car next time, same thing.’

‘Colour?’

‘Silver.’

‘She get a number?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jeez. Sort of witness you want and never get.’

‘Right. The car belongs to someone called Cornhill. Leon Cornhill. Lives in Bindley. I want you over there.’

‘What do you reckon, guv?’

‘Nothing until you’ve been up there.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Hundreds of
calls since the appeal … they’re sifting through but no sightings. The boy’s just evaporated.’

‘Someone’s got him.’

‘We’ve covered every house in the grid of avenues within the area … people are anxious to help. Not a sniff though. The school are beside themselves … frightened parents, kids hearing half a tale and making up the rest.’

‘What are the Angus parents doing?’

‘They’re at home …
they’ve another child to look after … the FLO is with them.’

‘Making tea. Drinking tea. Watching the news. Not eating. Not sleeping. Going over and over everything that morning. Heads aching with it. Poor sods.’

‘We’re getting plenty of help, info coming in from all over the country …’ Serrailler fell silent, thinking. Nathan waited.

‘I don’t think he’s hundreds of miles away. Don’t know why.
I think he’s … around here.’

‘They generally are.’

‘I know.’

The phone rang on his desk. Simon lifted the receiver. ‘Serrailler? Yes?’ He held up his hand to Nathan who was at the door. ‘Did he? When? OK, no one’s fault. Get someone there. Get a statement …’

‘Guv?’

‘The man Cornhill reported his Jaguar XKV missing ten days ago. He’d been away on business, had a company driver to the airport
so his own car was left in the garage. He got back. It was gone. Neat job apparently, careful break-in, no mess, just crowbarred the side of the garage door. No one heard or saw anything.’

‘So it wasn’t Cornhill doing the cruising?’

‘Evidently.’

One of the desk officers trawling through data came up with a man living on the Dulcie estate who had been placed on the paedophile register during
the past six months. Serrailler was looking at the printout as Nathan walked in.

‘Brent Parker, forty-seven, convictions for molesting young girls, imprisoned twice, no other offences on record … last released from Baldney eighteen months ago … 15 Maud Morrison Walk, Dulcie … divorced, one adult daughter living away. Unemployed apart from casual jobs mainly for the council … underwent treatment
programme at Baldney in the special unit for twelve months and again as an outpatient at BG psychiatric …’ He handed the sheet to Nathan.

How could you say he had an evil face? How could you say, that man looks like a paedophile? If he hadn’t known Brent Parker’s history Nathan wondered what he would have put him down as – paedophile? GBH? Fraud? Dustman? High Court judge? He sat staring at the
face, trying to empty his mind and clear his prejudices.

Brent looked older than forty-seven – ten years older at least. He had a soft, flabby face, folds of flesh under the eyes and at the jowls. Small concealed eyes, hiding their expression. Thick brows. Small chin. A self-satisfied expression, Nathan judged it – yes, Brent Parker looked pleased with himself. It was the face of a man who indulged
himself, possibly in drink as well as sex.

A nasty face.

How can you say that? How can you tell? If this was the face of the man about to become the new Pope, what would you say then? What would you read into the fleshy folds and the smug mouth?

‘I don’t like the look of him.’

‘Watch what you’re saying … no criminologist takes the study of physiognomy seriously nowadays. I’d like to see a
sample of his handwriting though.’

Nathan blinked.

‘I used to sneer at graphology so they sent me on a course. OK, get up there. If he’s in, grill him, and if you’re not one hundred per cent happy with every word he utters I want him brought in. If he isn’t at home, find him. Take whoever’s free with you.’

‘Guv.’

‘What?’

‘I dunno … He ain’t been in bother lately, isn’t it a bit thin?’

‘Of
course it’s thin but it’s something and until we get something stronger we jump on it … one thing we can’t do is ignore the least thing. We’re under the arc lights here and they’re not going to be switched off until David Angus is found. So move.’

Chris Deerbon had got home around nine in the evening and fifteen minutes later had gone out again on a call. The temporary locum they had appointed to the practice had left a message with the doctors’ answering service to say that she was ill.

‘Doctors are never ill. We can’t be,’ Cat said, handing him a banana and a box of juice from the packed lunch shelf. The casserole would simmer
in the bottom of the Aga for as long as it had to.

‘We, my love, are the last generation of GPs to have been trained to believe that.’

Chris kissed her and left. ‘Go to bed,’ he called back, ‘you look whacked.’

‘Don’t know why, I’ve done nothing all day.’

Sam and Hannah had been barely able to stand to have their faces washed and teeth cleaned before falling into bed. Cat took her book, switched
out all the lights but the lamp over the stove, put Mephisto, wailing in protest, out of the window, and went upstairs.

The children had curled themselves into their usual sleeping positions, Hannah neatly disposed
with her head on her arm, Sam in a tight little ball, knees up, duvet almost over him. Cat pulled it down a little and kissed his head with the mouse-soft brown hair. It was impossible
not to think of David Angus. Hannah felt cool. She would scarcely turn in her sleep all night. They were a happy little unit. Cat wondered how they would take to the baby when it was a reality, not a long-standing promise in which they had almost lost interest.

Half an hour later Chris rang. ‘I’ve got an anaphylaxis … child with a peanut allergy. I’m trying to stabilise him, and now old Violet
Chaundry’s daughter has rung in … she thinks her mother has had another stroke. I’m going to be a while. Are you in bed?’

‘And nearly asleep. The casserole’s in the bottom oven.’

‘I’ll probably be past it. Got to go. Love you.’

Cat read another chapter of her Anita Brookner novel before turning out the light. Outside the wind had got up and was rattling the overhanging rose branch against the
window. She found the noise strangely soothing.

She was woken by a movement at her side.

‘Mummy …’

‘Sam? You OK?’

‘I needed you.’

‘Oh honeybunch … come here.’ But Sam was already wrapped round her, his feet twined about her legs, arms behind her neck.

‘Don’t squash my tummy.’

‘I didn’t want to go back to sleep.’

‘Why? Bad dreams?’

He clung tighter. Cat shifted to try and make herself
comfortable without pushing him away.

‘Nat said David Angus had been murdered and thrown down a pit.’

Cat managed to lean across her son’s hot little clinging body and switch on the bedside lamp. His face looked up at hers, flushed and anxious.

‘Sam, Nat does not know anything …
anything
about David Angus. Do you hear me? What he said was not true …’

‘He said.’

‘He doesn’t know. Nobody knows.’

‘Why?’

‘Because … he hasn’t come home yet. The police haven’t found him.’

‘Why haven’t they?’