The mood at Cobalt Square is one of intense focus when Rose and Adam get back.
The very broad window of time in which Gregory could have left the house, combined with the wide number of possible routes away from the property in relation to street CCTV, plus the widespread public transport options mean it’s going to take days to check every avenue. And when a child goes missing, every minute counts.
Rose and Adam report to Mortimer on everything that happened with Heather, including their thorough search of the property. There simply wasn’t anywhere a child could have been – dead or alive.
‘Okay,’ says Mortimer, taking a sip from a mug of tea. ‘I can’t see how she’s a suspect but we’re keeping her firmly in our sights. Get that phone record looked at and identify everyone she’s spoken to. Get on to Probation about her and look at her movements over the last couple of weeks. The GPS tag will give us all that information.’
In turn, he updates them on what has been happening elsewhere.
Gwen has been questioned and now released. Anton is currently here, being questioned by two of Mortimer’s officers.
‘Anything so far?’ says Adam.
Mortimer sighs and rubs a hand over his chin. ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘Insisted on a solicitor the minute we talked about bringing him in for a chat, which might raise a flag. But it’s more likely he just watches a lot of telly like everyone else. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the parents are always in the frame in this sort of case. I will say that he’s bloody controlled for a man whose child is missing though. And that does worry me a little, even taking into account how it takes different people in different ways. We can’t assume anything at this stage.’
Rose and Adam’s next job is to find and question the young woman they’d seen leaving the property in tears the first time they visited Wyndham Terrace.
The FLO, Becky Iordanou, extracts the information from Gwen. In a quiet voice on the phone she reports that Gwen was somewhat reluctant to hand over the name and number. ‘She claims there’s nothing she can tell you of any use but I think I’ll let you be the judge of that,’ says Becky before signing off.
Agnes Barreau, Gregory’s one-time French tutor, lives in a small, terraced street in Chingford, which is lined by trees that have fresh, new leaves beginning to unfurl. Despite the chill, the sun is shining and there is a spring-like feeling in the air.
Agnes wears a long baggy jumper with a big star on the chest over exercise leggings. Her bare feet have neat, red-painted toenails and her fair hair is in two plaited swirls at the side of her head. When they tell the young woman why they are there, her eyes flare with shock and she ushers them quickly inside.
They are led into a small living room where a man in his twenties, with close-cropped hair and a thick beard, is engaged in some sort of war against zombies on a wide screen television, bare feet up on a coffee table.
After a hurried conversation in French, he leaves the room and Agnes gestures for them to sit. She offers coffee, which they accept gratefully.
‘Gabriel?’ she calls. ‘Tu pourrais apporter plus de café?’
‘My boyfriend, Gabriel, he is a chef,’ she says, sitting down, then picking up and cradling a small bowl of coffee as though needing to warm her hands. ‘He works at night and in the day …’ She gives a sort of hopeless shrug that seems to speak volumes. ‘Anyway, please tell me how I can help?’
Rose explains again about Gregory being missing and Agnes shakes her head in distress, then puts down the coffee, undrunk.
‘Ah, this is a terrible thing to hear,’ she says.
‘So we wondered if there was anything at all you could tell us that might help with our inquiries?’ Rose says. ‘Any friendships his parents don’t know about, for example?’
‘He is a very lonely boy,’ says Agnes. ‘He has no friends that I know of at all. All he does is homework and endless lessons. It’s not right.’
‘Have you ever seen him with a mobile phone?’ says Adam. Agnes gives a small laugh.
‘Ah, no, he was desperate for an iPhone,’ she says. ‘But his parents wouldn’t let him have any kind of mobile at all.’
‘Ms Barreau,’ says Adam, ‘we know that you had some sort of dispute with Anton Fuller that led to you no longer tutoring Gregory. Can you explain to us exactly what happened?’
Her expression darkens for a moment. She looks relieved when Gabriel brings in a tray containing a cafetiere and two mugs, a carton of milk and some sugar lumps in a box. Rose and Adam gratefully prepare their drinks.
‘He is a horrible man,’ says Agnes when Gabriel has left the room again. Her English is perfect but she misses the ‘h’ off ‘horrible’ now in her emotion. ‘I think he is a big bully. He accused me of cutting his flowers! And then he claimed Gregory wasn’t “progressing” as he put it, as much as he should, and that my services were no longer required. As if I would cut his stupid flowers! I mean,’ hotly now, ‘why would I do such a thing?’
‘Who do you think was responsible for that?’ says Adam. Agnes holds his gaze for a moment and then looks down at her lap, cheeks colouring a little.
‘You must tell us anything at all you think is useful, Ms Barreau,’ says Rose gently. ‘Even if it sounds … strange. We hear all sorts of things and nothing you can say will shock us. I promise you that.’
‘Okay,’ says Agnes, cautiously. ‘I know how this will sound but I think there is a … bad thing. A ghost. There, I said it.’ She raises her chin a little defiantly. ‘You may laugh at me now.’ Her accent has become noticeably stronger and her face is flushed, eyes bright.
‘We’re not laughing,’ says Adam evenly. Her gaze flicks back and forth between them, as if assessing whether to believe him.
Rose decides to tell her about what happened yesterday. When she gets to the part about the ‘boy in the wall’, Agnes nods vigorously.
‘Oui, oui!’ she says. ‘Gregory was obsessed with this boy. He talked to me all the time about the fact that the house was haunted. He was almost a bit proud of it. He said the ghost didn’t like his daddy.’ She sniffs. ‘Can’t say I would blame it for that.’
‘When you say Gregory was obsessed …?’ Rose says.
‘Well, he wanted to understand what was happening so he could make it stop. He told me he was making a project out of understanding the house’s history.’
‘Right,’ says Adam carefully. ‘This is all very helpful. When you say Anton Fuller is a bully, did you ever see any evidence of physical violence from him?’
The young woman hesitates. ‘I suppose I should mention this …’ she says. ‘The thing is, Gregory sometimes had bruises. Small ones, like pinch marks.’
Rose and Adam look at each other, clearly thinking the same thing.
But Agnes Barreau is shaking her head fervently. ‘I’m telling you this but I don’t think it is him, the father. I really don’t.’
‘Why not?’ says Adam. ‘Why are you so certain of that?’
‘Because one time I was there when Anton discovered some of these marks on Gregory’s arm. They didn’t realize I could hear them speaking. He was angry … asking the boy what he had been doing to himself.’
‘And what did Gregory say to that?’ says Rose.
Agnes Barreau bites her lip and looks from one to the other.
‘He said the boy did it. And Anton, he was … ah, he was very angry. He said Gregory would have his radio taken away that night so he couldn’t listen to the cricket. Said he had to stop hurting himself and telling such big lies.’
Adam fills in DCI Mortimer in the car, on the phone.
‘Right,’ says Adam after Mortimer has spoken for a moment or two. ‘We’ll do that then. Okay, see you later.’
He hangs up and turns to Rose, twirling a finger in the air. ‘Change of route. He says we should call in at Reservoir Road and liaise with Moony. See what she suggests.’
‘Okay,’ says Rose, glancing at him in surprise. ‘Is he taking this supernatural thing seriously then?’
Adam gives a short sharp laugh. ‘His exact words were, “The clock is ticking and we don’t have a thing so far. So if we need to conjure up a fucking ghost to find this boy we’re going to do it.”’
‘Right,’ says Rose. ‘Fair enough.’
‘That’s not all though,’ says Adam. ‘He’s also rightly concerned about those bruises. They’re hauling the parents in again.’
Scarlett and Moony are both there when they arrive back at the UCIT offices. They convene in the briefing area.
Scarlett proffers a bag of physalis around, muttering that, ‘none of you eat enough fruit’. Rose helps herself, peeling away the papery skin and popping one into her mouth. Her blood sugar is low and she resolves to have a hunt in the fridge for any other treats Scarlett may have brought in. Then they settle in for the meeting.
‘First up, top work by you, Scarlett,’ Adam begins. ‘I have no idea whether this previous crime is going to tie in with what’s happening but we have to put everything on the table just now.’
Scarlett beams. She’s rocking the Land Girl look today in grey denim dungarees, with a T-shirt underneath and a bright red scarf tied Forties-style around her wavy blonde hair.
Adam continues, telling Moony and Scarlett the details of Gregory’s disappearance, including the visits to Heather Doyle and Agnes Barreau.
‘The bruises that this Agnes Barreau talked about,’ says Moony, ‘she said they were like pinch marks. Isn’t that what you reported in the house, Rose?’
‘Yes,’ says Rose. ‘I don’t want to believe it was the parents who hurt Gregory. But I’m not sure I’m keen on the idea of the poor little sod being hurt by …’ she shudders ‘… poltergeists either and no one believing him.’
‘Could he be self-harming though?’ says Moony. ‘I mean, he may be pinching himself.’
‘That’s also a possibility,’ says Adam.
There’s a sombre pause before Scarlett breaks the silence. ‘Maybe the poltergeist is the spirit of Heather Doyle’s brother,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘The little boy killed in the fire?’
‘Perhaps,’ says Moony. ‘It would fit. They are often associated with young people, but that’s more about the victims than the source.’
‘I think, whatever it is …’ Rose is immediately flustered but she ploughs on, ‘is somehow older than that. If that even makes sense.’
‘Go on,’ says Moony, frowning.
‘Well, that phone call I had and the way it … sort of touched me. It didn’t seem like a little boy to me. There was something sexual about that.’
They all absorb this uncomfortable fact for a moment. Rose has been thinking about it for quite some time already.
‘Okay,’ says Moony decisively, ‘well Gregory says it’s a boy, not a man, and you say it’s a bit horny. So I reckon we’re dealing with a teenager then. I mean, when it was alive.’
‘Could be,’ says Rose, wondering when, if ever, she will completely adjust to this sort of conversation. It’s becoming more familiar anyway, which is both a good and a bad thing all in one.
‘Okay,’ Moony continues. ‘If the kid was “obsessed” with the house, as this French tutor says, it has to be a line of inquiry worth pursuing properly. He might be out there doing his own research right now. Trying to put a name to this supposed “boy in the wall”.’
‘I agree,’ says Adam, ‘I think that’s pretty much why we’ve been sent here.’
‘I’ve already been looking at the title deeds for number 42 Wyndham Terrace,’ says Scarlett. ‘Come have a look.’
They go to her desk and Scarlett points one shiny purple fingernail at the screen. ‘So … the Fullers bought the flat in 2015,’ she says.
‘Wonder how they afforded it?’ says Adam thoughtfully. ‘I mean, that’s a prime bit of real estate in Zone 2 and he’s only a schoolteacher. It might be a fancy school, but I doubt he’s getting paid that much.’
‘I think Gwen Fuller comes from money,’ says Rose. ‘She sounds very posh – much more so than him – and have you noticed some of the furniture in that house? It looks out of place and context. She might have inherited money along with the Downton Abbey furniture.’
‘Yeah, good point,’ says Adam. ‘Anyway, go on, Scarlett.’
‘They bought it from a woman called Linda Meredith,’ she says, ‘who was living there with her husband and a daughter.’
‘No boys,’ murmurs Rose.
‘No boys,’ says Scarlett. ‘I’ve cross-checked everything here against the available census information too. Someone called Ian Baxter, some sort of property developer, bought it from the council after the death of Patricia Doyle, who was a council tenant. He then bought up the other part of the house and converted it back to being one property.’
‘So it was council-owned for a time before then?’ says Adam.
‘Looks that way,’ says Scarlett, ‘which might take a little longer to research. I’ve put a call in to Camden Council and am waiting to speak to someone there. But in the meantime, I’ve looked at the census information for each decade going back to not long after the house was built in 1899, which at least tells us who was there on those specific years. Look,’ she says reaching across her desk, ‘I’ve printed it out.’
‘Great,’ says Rose, taking the thin, plastic document case from Scarlett, which contains two sheets of printed paper. She starts looking through and reads what has been written next to each date, ten years apart.
1901 – Alfred Edwin Bates (28) and Margaret Ada Bates (27) Lydia Audrey Bates (10)
1911 – As above
1921 – 1951 Stanley Clifford Floyd (32–62)
1961 – Lillian Maxwell-Carter (46)
1971 – No information
Bought by council in 1981 and thereafter was Patricia Doyle, then Ian Baxter, the property developer.
‘Wonder why 1971 was missing?’ says Rose, handing the papers to Adam, who quickly scans them.
‘Hard to say,’ says Moony, ‘but it might be that a large number of people were coming and going from there.’
Rose and Adam both look up at her and she makes a face.
‘Doesn’t make it easy but my money is on finding this “boy” or whatever the hell he is, is during that period of time.’
‘It fits with whatever the hell it was I saw playing out on that wall,’ says Rose. ‘Flares and flower power whatnot. The big ’tache on that bloke.’
‘Don’t knock the Seventies,’ says Moony a little wistfully. ‘I had some of my best times then.’
After a discussion, it’s decided that Rose and Moony will have another crack at speaking to the old lady at number 40. Old Mrs Quinn seems to be the only other person who sensed something strange about that property. ‘And let’s not forget the comment about the wicked boy,’ says Moony.
She’s coming along because she thinks ‘adding a bit of maturity to the equation’ might make the woman talk.
Rose drives. As her boss shuffles in her seat and roots inside her handbag, which Rose knows would have cost more than any outfit in her own wardrobe, she thinks about the last time she travelled with Moony.
They went to see a revolting man called Kenny Wiggins, who kept snakes and claimed to have been able to ‘visit’ people around his neighbourhood from his own bed using astral projection. Everything about that day felt like an assault on Rose’s senses: from the smell of the dinner bubbling on Wiggins’ stove, to the bombardment of information about things she didn’t want to believe were real. She had been briefly seconded to UCIT to investigate Hannah Scott’s murder and had gone in with such a bad attitude – she can admit that now – that Moony had pretty much told her to bugger off.
Sometimes she still can’t believe this department is real and that she is one of its small team.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the realization that Moony has shoved a bag of Haribo at her, so close it’s practically under her nose.
‘Ooh, go on then,’ she says and takes out two, which she stuffs into her mouth.
‘Don’t want you fainting,’ says Moony. Rose gives her a quick side glance and then turns back to face the windscreen. The other woman is chewing away and staring straight ahead. Maybe she looks a little pale, she thinks, but this is the first time Moony has shown what seems like any real kindness towards her. It feels odd. Nice.
‘What do you think of Mortimer?’ says Moony.
‘He seems very good,’ says Rose, glancing over at her boss.
‘Yeah,’ says Moony quietly. ‘He really is. He and my husband were practically best friends.’
Moony has gone quite still in the seat next to her. Rose flicks her gaze towards her but it feels like an intrusion. The other woman is staring ahead, her expression filled with pain.
She’s aware that Moony was married to a policeman and that he died some years ago, but no one has ever really filled her in on the details. She feels like she should say something now but somehow, the appropriate response is entirely eluding her. Scarlett would know what to say. But Rose? Rose hasn’t got a clue. Not for the first time, she wishes she knew how to handle difficult situations that didn’t involve an arrest at the end of them.