The Furthest Station Page 7

  Chess insisted on talking my hand and dragging me out to see his river. What had once been a culverted course had been smothered by more of the cultivated reed banks. No doubt all the microorganisms and miniature water life that Bev says are so vital for a healthy river were sucking up nutrients to their hearts’ content before becoming snacks for the next organism in the great chain of life. Although Bev says it’s more of a web, shunting various forms of energy around the ecosystem. Waving the gauntlet of self-organising complexity in the face of entropy itself.

  I told Chess that his was a lovely river and in fact quite the nicest river I’d ever seen and, content, he led me back to sit down at the white plastic garden table for tea and explanations.

  “We found him two years ago,” said Mrs Heywood. “There was a terrible rainstorm one night and Allen here was worried that the river would flood, so he kept going outside with a torch to check. And then, just after midnight, he comes back into the kitchen with this poor mite here.”

  “I found him standing at the end of the garden,” said Mr Heywood. “Totally starkers.”

  This had led to rushing him into the house, wrapping him in a blanket and plying him with hot chocolate made with full milk, naturally.

  “Naturally,” I said.

  Obviously after that they had planned to call the police, honest, only it was such a dreadful night and what with the flooding and the chaos they thought the police might be busy.

  “Plenty of time to call them in the morning,” said Allen.

  But in the morning there was breakfast to make and clearing the muck off the flooded bit of the garden, which Chess helped with, and the next thing they knew it was evening and the poor little mite had curled up and gone to sleep on the sofa.

  “When did you decide to keep him?” I asked.

  Lillian paused in the act of offering me a teacake—we were on to tea and cakes by then.

  “We didn’t decide,” she said. “Not as such.”

  “We more sort of didn’t try to get rid of him,” said Allen.

  I took a teacake, as did Chess, who then proceeded try to stuff as much of it into his mouth in one go as he could. The logistics of keeping him were surprisingly easy; they merely told everyone that Chess was a great nephew of theirs and they were looking after him. They let their neighbours assume that something vaguely Daily Mail-ish had happened to the parents—drug addiction, mental breakdown, something like that, and got on with the practical side of raising a lively young boy.

  “You couldn’t have got away with something like that in the old days,” said Lillian. “Could you, Allen?”

  “No,” said Allen

  In the old days everybody in a village like Chesham knew everybody else and everybody knew everybody’s business. Somebody would have asked questions and sooner or later the vicar would have popped around for a “little chat.”

  “Likely it would have been that young feller,” said Allen. “The one that went on to be bishop.” This being the 1950s when there were three separate parishes covering Chesham proper—Waterside where Allen and Lillian lived, Latimer and Ashley Green.

  “The funny thing is,” said Allen, “that the more people who live here, the less religion there seems to be.”

  A certain river goddess of my acquaintance says that the late Victorian church was less than happy to share turf with “pagan” spirits, particularly in urban areas. I looked over at Chess who took that as a cue to show me how wide he could open his mouth to display masticated teacake.

  I could understand their point of view.

  Lillian and Allen were old Waterside—their families had been living in the area since before the Mills were built. I wondered if there was a connection and I wondered how old Chess was going to have to get before I could ask him.

  “We fell into a routine,” said Lillian, although they had wondered how they were going to register Chess for school when the time came. There being a serious absence of birth certificates and other official whatnots.

  “We would have loved some help,” said Lillian. “But we didn’t know where to turn.”

  “Everybody else seems to have a line to call,” said Allen. “Or a something-or-other on the internet.”

  They paused and looked at me.

  To avoid their gaze, I looked around the garden which, unlike the house, was lush and blooming. What I thought were probably roses climbed up and around the kitchen door. A fat bumblebee nosed around the cab of a red and yellow Tonka truck before zigzagging lazily off amongst nodding ranks of orange, yellow and blue flowers. There was a drowsy quiet about the garden. I couldn’t hear the cars going past at the front, or the neighbour’s radio. We could have been in the middle of an ancient forest with the oak and ash and willow tree.

  I looked sharply at Chess, who gave me a wide smile with just a hint of sly about the corners.

  I mentally sang the sad lament of the hard-pressed copper.

  Oh for I am not a social worker that these woes are placed upon my care.

  “Stop that,” I told Chess, who giggled.

  This would have to be sorted out, but not this afternoon.

  “I’m not promising anything,” I said. “But I’ll see if I can arrange some assistance.”

  They both looked stricken. Not social services, they said.

  I had considered them, but what had Buckingham Social Services ever done to me that I was going to inflict a cheeky little godlet on them? I told Lillian and Allen I’d be in contact within a week and they were not to worry. At the very least, I thought, I can arrange a competent cleaner to come in and scrub out some of those corners.

  Before I left I asked Chess whether he’d noticed anything strange recently. Given his age I thought it was unlikely. He looked up at me with his big pink face and casually pointed upstream.

  “There,” he said. “Spooky stuff.”

  “Really,” I said. “What kind of spooky stuff?”

  His face screwed up in concentration.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “It’s loud. Lots of shouting.”

  “Can you hear what they’re shouting about?”

  He shook his head.

  “How long have they been shouting for?”

  “Forever and ever,” said Chess, and went back to his game.

  When you’re four, forever and ever can mean yesterday. But amongst my other policing skills I’ve acquired a proficiency in straw-clutching that verges on the savant. So I checked Google Maps on my phone and found that upstream was Chesham, the last stop on that branch of the Metropolitan Line and the furthest station out from London.

  Jaget called me as I headed back for the Asbo and said he’d found a couple of likely candidates amongst the misper files.

  “Did one of them live in Chesham?” I asked.

  “As it happens,” he said, “yeah. Name of Brené McClaren. Lives in Chesham, commutes into London where she works for Islington Council as a social worker.”

  And the princess liked to visit the people of the kingdom, I thought, especially the sick and unhappy.

  “I think we’ve found our primary focus,” I said.

  Chapter 6:

  THE GHOST

  WRANGLER

  But not our only one, because the first rule of good policing means not haring down the first lead you get, however promising, until you’ve at least made a stab at eliminating the alternatives. Since, like our Brené McClaren, the alternatives—one from Amersham and the other from Rickmansworth—both fell into the jurisdiction of the Thames Valley Police, we would achieve this through the application of the second rule of good policing which is always try to get someone else to do the grunt work.

  In this instance this was the aforementioned Thames Valley Police, who have about the same relationship with the Met as Everton FC has with Liverpool4. Although these days both sides try to keep it professional when cooperating on a case. Jaget set up a meeting with the local plod in charge and hopped the next train up—I agreed to meet him
at Chesham station.

  Chesham is where the Metropolitan Line flounders to a stop and you could feel the town vacillating between being nothing more than a dormitory for London commuters and a county market town with a cookie-cutter pedestrianised high street. It’s the sort of white-bread rural ideal with good communication links favoured by media types who feel that they’ve done their bit for urban multiculturalism and are looking for somewhere comfortably vanilla to raise their kids.

  The valley of the Chess narrows as it reaches the town and the station is one of those that ends up halfway up the side of the hill with a couple of steep roads down into the town centre. The station has the big car park and stuffed bicycle rack that is the proud mark of a commuter town but, alas, no coffee shop that is the true sign of civilisation. Not even one of those kiosk things which, I know from bitter experience, are a bastard to work in. I asked around and was told that all the cafés were on the High Street at the bottom of a steep hill. So I called Bev instead and chatted to her while I waited for Jaget.

  “And he was, what, about four?” she said.

  “The paediatrician they went to thought he was about two when they first had him checked out,” I said.

  Beverley was amazed the doctor hadn’t reported them.

  “They went private,” I said. “Hinted that he was Romanian.”

  “Clever,” said Beverley. “I like them already.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But they’re in over their heads and I’m not even sure our little water baby isn’t using the influence on them. Which is, one might consider, a bit of an ethical dilemma.”

  “Sounds a bit mythic to me,” she said. “Childless couple, foundling baby.” There was a pause and I heard a young woman’s voice asking a question. Then Bev came back on. “Chelsea wants to know if he strangled any snakes.”

  I said that I’d be sure to ask at the next interview.

  “The Chess isn’t my watershed, it’s not even my Mum’s watershed,” said Beverley. “Or the Old Man’s for that matter. It’s probably not a good idea for me to get involved.”

  I said that she’d been fast enough to get involved in Herefordshire, but she said that was different.

  “That was a favour. I had permission. There was mutual subsidiarity and all that style of thing.”

  “I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” I said.

  “It’s the principle that central authority only acts when a problem can’t be solved at a local level,” said Bev, which shut me up—even though I still don’t think she was using the word right. Fortunately just then I saw Jaget coming out of the station and had an excuse to ring off.

  Our TVP liaison was one DS Malcom Transcombe out of Amersham nick. He was a short, stout, white man with thinning red hair in his late forties and looked upon us with the delighted eye of a man who’s just had his workload doubled by a couple of likely lads from the big city.

  He’d arranged to meet us in the car park to prove that he was a bit busy and could we get this out of the way quickly, and had arrived in a well-kept ten-year-old Rover 75 with a hideous purple custom spray job.

  DS Transcombe leant back against the bonnet, crossed his arms and gave me and Jaget the eye.

  “Where did you say your information came from?” he asked.

  “Sources,” I said. “We wouldn’t have bothered you at this stage of the investigation, except it’s a possible kidnapping.” I let that trail off.

  “Sources?” said DS Transcombe, who was no doubt thinking of all the unpaid overtime this was going to cost him.

  “Confidential sources.”

  DS Transcombe narrowed his eyes. You see, the trouble with detectives is that they’re detectives and are literally trained not to believe anything they haven’t verified themselves. Plus about two seconds after Jaget contacted him he would have been on the phone to an “old mate” in the Met. Every good police officer who wants to survive on the job for more than five minutes has a network of “old mates.” Jaget is mine at the BTP. DS Transcombe would have phoned his, let’s call him Bill, and asked just what the Special Assessment Unit is when it’s at home and what should he do about them?

  Bill, if he was any kind of an insider, would probably tell Transcombe the SAU was the latest name for the Folly, you know the guys that deal with the “special cases.” You mean like…? Yeah, those ones. So what am I supposed to do with them? Handle the case, keep your distance and kiss your clear-up rate goodbye. Oh well, thanks Bill, that was helpful. Anything for an old mate—you know that.

  “Right,” said DS Transcombe, dragging out the word. “Sources.”

  See, a reputation, even a dubious one, can be a useful thing.

  He asked what we wanted to do next and I asked what actions had been scheduled with regards to Brené McClaren’s disappearance and he said bugger all so far. He’d actioned a statement from the workmate who’d reported her missing and had been planning a visit to her house this very afternoon, as it happened.

  “Good,” I said. “Because I figured that would be a good start.” And anyway you don’t go kicking down doors in someone else’s manor without permission. “Where is it?”

  “Just down there,” said DS Transcombe, pointing back the way I’d come. “Waterside.”

  So we climbed back into our respective motors and drove down to what looked to me a particularly uninspired bit of late twentieth social housing dropped into what had probably been a bit of brown field behind an original row of Victorian terraces. At least parking was convenient, with spaces along the frontage and then steps up to the balcony stroke walkway that is the defining feature of modern urbanism. Brené’s house was the first in the row. We checked the front windows, but the net curtains were drawn and the inside was too dark to see. As a matter of course we rang the bell, banged on the door, yelled “police” and, as a last resort, because we like our dignity, bent over to yell through the letter box.

  DS Transcombe sighed and looked sourly at me.

  “Bugger,” he said.

  Forcing an entry is always a pain because, apart from anything else, modern doors are bloody hard to kick in and don’t have the convenient small glass panels you can smash and reach in to lift the latch. Round the back is even worse because modern French windows are usually single sheets of plate glass and breaking one of those is hard to do safely. Now, Nightingale had been teaching me his useful little spell for popping a lock, but I’m not that proficient at it yet, and in any case if we were dealing with a magical abduction then I didn’t want to contaminate the scene by laying down a new layer of vestigia.

  Plus I wasn’t so certain of DS Transcombe that I wanted to freak him out.

  In the end Jaget visited the neighbours in turn until he found one that was keeping an emergency spare key for Brené. DS Transcombe took their name and details and told them we might be back to interview them later. Then we let ourselves in.

  Nobody had been in the house for at least a couple of weeks. We all knew that from the moment we stepped over the pile of junk mail in the hallway. The mouldy breakfast washing up, the off milk in the fridge, the unmade bed with a thin layer of dust were all just confirmation. There’s always a tension between the need to preserve a scene for modern forensics and the pressure to get a move on in a time-sensitive investigation. We figured we had to do an initial search, but we all put on our gloves and touched things as little as possible.

  We discovered that Brené McClaren’s passport was in a shoebox on the top shoe shelf in her wardrobe, there hadn’t been a violent struggle, and she had terrible taste in music.

  “What’s wrong with Arcade Fire?” asked Jaget.

  I did not dignify that with an answer.

  We split up and did a quick canvass of the neighbours. It was late enough for everyone to be home from work, but nobody on her terrace had seen her for days, possibly weeks. I noticed DS Transcombe making a note—someone, several someones probably—was going to be doing a proper house to house just a
s soon as the overtime was sorted out.

  “You think she was abducted on the way to work?” said DS Transcombe.

  I pointed out the breakfast things, the unmade bed and the fact that it was a work colleague who had reported her missing. It was thin but it was a place to start—you can’t wait for more data forever.

  Despite having a driving licence, the DVLA showed no car registered in Brené’s name. With that in mind, the three of us walked back towards the station to see what the fastest route was likely to be. It was Jaget, with his extensive knowledge of problem spots on the Underground, who knew about the public footpath.

  “There’s a couple of good points where people try and access the tracks,” he said.

  I didn’t ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn’t anything so stupid that somebody wouldn’t try it sooner or later. Although these days there was likely to be some YouTube of them doing it, which at least helped with the post-mortem investigation.

  As we traced the route, DS Transcombe made a note of where all the CCTV cameras were and which shops and houses should be in the first wave of door to door.

  The actual footpath was practically dead straight and overshadowed by house backs on one side and trees on the other. By this time the sun was low enough for the path to be gloomy with occasional patches of evening sun.

  “It’s a good place to ambush someone,” I said as we walked its length.

  “Nah,” said Jaget. “First thing in the morning this path is going to be heaving.”

  “Doesn’t mean she wasn’t snatched,” said DS Transcombe. “People have been grabbed from crowds before.”

  I was thinking of Alice’s tale of how the Princess’s tea had been drugged.

  “Perhaps her attacker took her from her house before she could leave,” I said.

  “One theory at a time,” said DS Transcombe, but we found no convenient holes in the chain-link fence that lined the side with the tracks, no abandoned bags or other signs of a struggle. Not even a dropped brooch or packet of lembas.