The garage was cold and lit by a fluorescent light. The back wall was covered with grey metal racks stacked from concrete floor to ceiling. In the corner beside the door leading to the house, a chest freezer stood open. Marilyn Angus stood beside it. She wore an old sheepskin jacket belonging to her husband and some black gloves that she had found on one of the shelves and which smelled of oil.
She had switched off the freezer and emptied it completely. A lot of the food she had bagged in black sacks, to be thrown out; the rest she had put into carriers, to be returned to the freezer when it had defrosted.
Now, she was going to start on the racks. God knew what was in most of the boxes. Old toys. Old tools. Old files. Old clothes. Old. Old. Old. Why had they kept all this stuff? Because there was space to keep it in. She was going to take down every box and open it, go through the contents, sort them, and throw away, ruthlessly. It was the only thing she could do, a job which occupied her, tired her, needed doing and could be done while most of her self was elsewhere.
With David.
Where?
A small rail ran round inside her head like a toy train, carrying boxes and bundles and bags and every so often an item would fall off and down a chute, to land in front of her, demanding her attention. She had to pick it up. She could do no other. She had to open it. She had to examine the contents.
This time the box contained a picture of David as he had first emerged from her body, slippery, flushing pink as she looked, eyes tight shut against the light, arms flailing. Hair. A shock of dark, Struwwelpeter hair. For a split second he was upside down. His genitals had looked huge, like strange growths against the tiny damp limbs.
She stood in the cold garage staring, staring at the contents of the box under the forensic light. She was conscious of the smell of oil on the old gloves but not of the cold at all.
For a moment, she wondered what she was doing here and why. For another moment she could not remember her own name.
‘Marilyn?’
The door into the house had opened. There was a woman. Who was she? She looked slightly familiar. Friendly. Marilyn felt she ought to be polite but did not know quite in what way.
‘The Chief Inspector is here.’
The woman came forward quickly. The woman laid her hand on her arm.
‘There isn’t any news. He just needs to see you.’
The woman standing beside her was the FLO. Kate? Yes, Kate something.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re freezing. You’ve been out here too long.’
‘Have I?’
She could not remember how long or what she had been doing. There seemed to be a lot of bags and boxes at her feet and the freezer lid was up.
‘Come on, I’ll finish this after I’ve made some tea … come into the warm.’
She let the girl lead her into the kitchen, and help her off with what seemed to be Alan’s old sheepskin jacket. Her hands smelled of oil.
‘Do you want a minute? He’ll wait …’
He?
It was warm in the kitchen. Thawing was like coming out of a dream.
‘The DCI.’
There was a sudden pain through her heart as she remembered.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’
Simon Serrailler. She still could not think of him as a policeman. Serraillers were doctors.
She walked into the sitting room.
‘Sit down please … there’ll be some tea.’ She smiled. ‘I dread to think what our tea bill is going to be.’
Then she put her arm up and leaned it on the mantelpiece before bursting into sobs so desperate and raw that Simon was startled by them.
He got up and handed her the box of tissues from the coffee table. It happened often enough and he understood it, this terrible, heart-rending crying. He waited awkwardly. In the end she shook her head, wiped her face and sat down.
She looks a hundred years old, Simon thought, or no age, no human age looks like this.
‘I want to be dead.’
‘Mrs Angus, we’re –’
‘No, please do not tell me you are doing everything in your power to find him. You think you are, but it isn’t enough … nothing is enough, nothing short of every single human being in this country dropping what they are doing and looking for him.’
‘Yes,’ Simon said quietly.
The FLO handed him a cup of tea.
‘But I’m here to talk to you about what we plan … With your agreement, I’d like to do a reconstruction of David’s last-known movements.’
Marilyn stared at him. She lifted her teacup but set it down again, her hand shaking.
‘How can you do that? David isn’t here.’
‘We’ll have a boy the same age, same height and colouring, same school uniform … as much like David as possible … he would …’
‘Pretend to be David.’
‘That’s the way it works, yes.’
‘And I would … be myself?’
‘Yes … we’d try to get neighbours and people who were driving down the avenue that morning … people walking … everything … as near as possible to replicate it. It’s a hard thing to have to do but it really could give us the key. Someone doing the same thing in the same way as they were doing it that day may have a flash of recollection … something they saw, a car, a pedestrian … something they heard. I know you want to do anything possible.’
‘Will Alan have to do this?’
‘He will have to do as he did that morning. He left for the hospital forty minutes before you and David came out of the house?’
‘Yes. The only way Alan can deal with this is by working.’
Simon stood up. ‘Everyone has their own way of trying to cope. We’ll give Kate details of the arrangements for the day after tomorrow. I know how distressing it will be but it could be vitally important.’
‘But what boy can you get …? You don’t know the boys.’
‘Leave it to us.’
‘I was clearing out some shelves. It was so cold out there. Do you think David is cold? Whoever … if they are looking after him … he only had his blazer, you see.’
Leaving the house, Serrailler felt angry with Alan Angus, so anxiously defended by his wife, so wrapped up in work that he left her alone all day with a policewoman. It might be his way of coping but Simon questioned the humanity of it, let alone whether a neurosurgeon required to perform intricate life-saving brain operations and whose nine-year-old son had been missing for several days was able do his job properly.
Before returning to the station, Serrailler drove into Lafferton and stopped at the florist. She liked something bright … a big bunch of red and orange and yellow. He added a red balloon. The whole looked garish and festive and slightly ridiculous sitting in the boot of Simon’s car. It pleased him.