He took Geoff Prince because Geoff was taciturn, so much so that he seemed to lack much interest in the job at all. But he was dogged, and good at detail. He didn’t chat and never made stupid judgements.
The Dulcie estate by night was slightly more attractive than in daylight because even the sodium street lights managed to soften the concrete and blur the ugliness of the whole. In all other respects, though, it was not a place around which to walk after dark and so nobody did. The teenage thugs and junkies had it to themselves.
It was the smell as they got out of the car. Night after night Nathan had leaned out of his bedroom window smelling the smell – chips, oil, human detritus; nowhere else smelled like the Dulcie. He remembered the longing, like a sickness, to get out, to do anything to escape into a better place, a world that smelled fresher and cleaner and more prosperous – though it had never been money that had motivated him. Nathan Coates had known by the age of thirteen that if you wanted easy money you stuck around the Dulcie. It had never been that.
Maud Morrison Walk was on the other side of Long Avenue from where his family lived – the slightly more respectable side. The houses here had front gardens and gates, and not so many abandoned rusting cars and old greyhound cages in the front.
‘Here we go.’
Geoff said nothing.
The curtains were cherry red and tightly drawn. There was a rim of light thin as a wire showing round the side and flickering neon blue from a television screen.
‘What the hell’s all this?’
Geoff flashed his torch. The front garden was decorated not with plants, nor with ancient bicycles and prams, but with hubcaps … several dozen hubcaps, arranged carefully against the fence and along the wall as if they were exhibits.
‘Must grow ‘em,’ Geoff said.
The front door bell played ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
‘Brent Parker? I’m DS Nathan Coates, this is DC Geoff Prince.’
‘You took your time.’
Brent Parker held open the door.
It was a smell again, though nothing like one he had ever smelled before and it choked him. Nathan stood in the doorway of the small, hot, frowsty sitting room and tried to locate it, to make it out. There was a three-bar electric heater full on, a television blaring, a huge neon tank of fish set against the wall.
And the smell.
‘Would you mind turning that off please, sir?’
Parker ambled towards the television set.
He was a huge man, huge-bellied, huge-headed, with a black ponytail, hands like plates, fingers like bunches of bananas. Nathan looked into his face. The eyes were small, hidden behind deep lids and in folds of flesh, and the flesh was soft and pendulous beneath them.
‘I almost came in. Get it over with.’
‘To the station?’
Parker sat down but did not suggest that they followed suit.
‘Well, you was always going to come here, wasn’t you?’
‘Were we?’
‘Course. Kid goes missing. I take it you ent found him?’
‘Why did you expect us to come here?’
‘Don’t mess me about, son, I been messed about enough. Kid goes missing, I’ve a record for kids. Stands to reason.’
‘Where were you on Tuesday morning, Mr Parker, around eight o’clock?’
‘In bed.’
‘Alone?’
‘Who’d have me?’
‘Anyone else in the house?’
‘Only Tyson.’
‘Your dog.’
‘Nope.’
‘Don’t mess me about, Mr Parker. I don’t go for it.’
‘I know who you are. Dinky Coates’s lad … snotty little kid, you were.’
‘Was anyone else here who can vouch for you being in bed at that time on Tuesday morning?’
‘Ask Tyson.’
Nathan followed the man’s sausage finger. On the other side of the room, above a shiny sideboard, stood another tank, letting off a strong glow from inside.
The smell.
Geoff Prince went over and peered in.
‘You got a licence for this python?’
‘Don’t need no licence.’
‘Think you’re doing it a favour, do you, keeping it crammed into there?’
‘Want me to let him out and run around?’
‘Do you have a car?’
‘On and off.’
‘I don’t suppose you drive a Jaguar XKV?’
Parker snorted with laughter and the snort sent spittle shooting out of his mouth towards Nathan. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘Have you ever seen this boy?’
‘Don’t bother, I seen the posters, I know what he looks like.’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘Might have. Might not. Could have passed him in the street any day. So could you.’
‘Listen –’
‘No, you fuckin’ listen, Coates. You listen. I know what I done and I been inside for it and I done the programme for it and I’m out, finished, paid for, only you lot can’t bleedin’ forget it … I know where I am, I’m on your fuckin’ register, that’s where, and there I’ll be till I’m frying in the Parkside Crem incinerator, but I ent seen that kid, I ent taken the kid, I ent been down that road, I don’t intend goin’ down that road, I don’t intend gettin’ near any fuckin’ kid ever again. If you want to know, I’ve joined a marriage agency, get myself a woman, homekeeper, to look after me and Tyson, shut you up. Go on, get out. Fuck off, before I lift the lid off of his tank.’
Parker stood in the hallway with his back to the open kitchen door. Through a gap, Nathan caught sight of another illuminated tank on top of the fridge, glowing red. Parker smelled too, rank in their nostrils as they passed unavoidably close to him on their way out. For a second, he grabbed Nathan’s sleeve.
‘You ent checked your records careful enough, have you, you stuck-up young sod?’
Nathan pulled his arm away. ‘If you’ve anything to tell us, Parker, you better spit it out.’
Geoff Prince was halfway to the car.
‘You wouldn’t have wasted your time.’
‘I said –’
‘I heard you. See, it’s all done with now, I’m treated, en I, cured, went through a load of them psychiatrists and they sorted it, only you’d know if you’d looked weren’t no point in coming here talking to me. It was girls. Always. I never took a look at no boys. It was girls. Always. You take a look. I could have you for harassment.’
Geoff was silent as he drove back to the station.
‘I feel like I need a shower and to have me clothes sent to the cleaner’s,’ Nathan said after a while. ‘Are people allowed to keep pythons just like that?’
‘Dunno. Want a check?’
‘Naw, got enough on. Just hope he doesn’t forget to put the top back on the tank one day.’
‘It’s not him. No way.’
Nathan agreed, but said nothing. The smell and aura of nastiness had hung about Brent Parker and his hot, stinking rooms, but not because he had had anything to do with the dis appearance of David Angus. The DCI had wanted him brought in if there had been the slightest suspicion, but there hadn’t been, not about the boy at least. ‘They’ll have checked on the stolen Jag time we get back.’
‘You reckon anything to that?’
‘Might be.’
‘Bit obvious … crawling down the road and back in broad daylight sussing out the scene.’
‘Right.’
‘I reckon it was just someone looking for a house. Those bloody great detached places behind their hedges and driveways and posh gates never have anything so obvious as a number, even a name, where you can find it. I know, I did a house-tohouse all round there. Never a bloody sign.’
‘Right.’
‘They do a nice hot pork bap out of Toni’s van.’
‘Go on then.’
Brent Parker’s house was in Nathan’s mind. He was walking round the rooms, looking at everything, trying to remember what it was that had started to niggle. Something. He had seen something, not enough to pay attention, maybe not seen it properly, but something.
He took the hot roll in its cone of greaseproof paper from Geoff’s hand and the smell made him realise how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten more than a couple of chocolate biscuits for hours. He bit deep into the savoury, crumbly mass of meat and bread and hot sage stuffing, closing his eyes. But even while he was eating with such ravenous pleasure, it was there, niggling away. Something. Something.