He had a week’s leave. It was late June. People spoke of it for years afterwards, the long, long spring, the hot, hot summer.
Simon had packed his drawing things into the canvas bag, the few clothes he ever took abroad with him, half a dozen paper backs. He was leaving at five the next morning to catch an early flight. He would be in Venice by early afternoon, meeting Ernesto and his boat at the terminal.
He was switching off the refrigerator and propping the door open when the telephone rang. He was off duty now. It had to be family.
‘Guv? I know you’re on leave only …’
‘Go on, Nathan.’
‘Thought you might like a bit of good news.’
‘Always do with it.’
‘Report came in via Interpol … they traced connections in five countries so far … them stolen cars … looks as if we got Lee Carter sewn up. Right little racket. He got the cars nicked and changed the plates and that. Set up false documents and bunged them off abroad in ones and twos.’
‘Where to?’
‘Russia mainly. Few other places I’ve never even heard of, to be honest with you.’
‘Criminal underworld in Russia?’
‘Yeah, and they like flash cars. CPS won’t throw this one out. One thing though … we let that Andy Gunton get off with TADA.’
‘Taking and driving away. That’s all he was doing.’
‘You don’t reckon he was in on the rest of it, then?’
‘Do you?’
There was a pause. Serrailler had no doubts that Andy Gunton had been small fry. But he wanted Nathan to make up his own mind. ‘Naw,’ the sergeant said in the end. ‘He needed some cash, he got stupid.’
‘Agreed. I feel sorry for Andy Gunton. Don’t quite know why.’
Nathan laughed. ‘You meet his sister Michelle, you’ll feel a lot sorrier. I tell you what though, guv. You put the fear of God into the both of them, him and Carter, when they thought you was looking them over, regarding the missing kid.’
‘Oh I know. Carter’s low life, Gunton’s been stupid, but they’re not child abductors. Never crossed my mind. Besides, forensics went over those aircraft hangars on their hands and knees.’
‘Where is that kid, guv?’ Nathan sounded close to tears. ‘Where’ve they got him?’
Serrailler sighed. What was there to say? What answer did he have?
‘I get sick thinking about it,’ Nathan said.
‘We’ll have them, Nathan.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. And if not us, someone else, some force somewhere.’
‘You believe that?’
‘I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t.’
‘Right.’
Simon put the phone down, Nathan’s last word in his ears. Right. But it wasn’t right. He knew it, the DS knew it. It was as wrong as it could be. Not everything worked out. Not every killer was caught. Not every missing child was found, alive or dead. Sometimes there was no resolution. Someones, you had to live with that, and it was the hardest thing of all. He sat in his chair and looked out at the sky beyond the window. He felt drained, but it had more to do with frustration than overwork. You lived for that closure, he thought – case solved, a charge, a conviction. File shut. When it was so long in coming, or never came, the sense of exhaustion was compounded by a flat, morale-sapping sense of failure. He had it now. The whole team had it. They knew David Angus was dead, all their sense and experience told them so. Knew it, but did not know it. They knew nothing and it drove them crazy.
He closed his eyes. Crazy. A lot of things had happened to make him crazy. Martha’s death. Marilyn Angus. Things in his family which troubled him, but which he could not properly define.
And Diana.
Diana made him not crazy, but furious, with a desperate need to defend himself, his space, his privacy, his entire life and being. He hated the feeling that she was watching him, prying into corners of his life he had always kept away from anyone. Above all, he hated the messiness of her feelings, poured out over him. What he had thought was an easy, casual friendship had been turned inside out. He stood up and walked to the window, back to the chair, back to the window again, irritable and angry, with Diana, with himself.
The phone rang again, saving him.
‘Guv …’
‘Now what?’
‘A call just come in from West Mercia force. Seven-year-old boy gone missing. Left his house for the village school about quarter of a mile away. Called in at the shop for sweets and wasn’t seen again after. They’ve done all the local stuff. Nothing. It’s been twelve hours. They just rung us.’
‘Who’s in charge?’
‘Phipps. Asked for you. I said you was on your holidays.’
Simon stared out of the window at the darkening sky.
It was the worst news, and he had been dreading it all along. Somewhere, another child. Another disappearance. More agony. He had no need for it to be his again. He was on holiday. He could leave it to them.
I’ve had enough, he thought. He could not tell whether he simply needed his break or whether the sense of staleness and dissatisfaction went deeper. Had he, indeed, had enough?
David Angus’s face was outside his window, set against the sky, filling his mind.
Whoever is doing this will go on, Simon thought. There’ll be another. And another. Because people like this, the child molesters, the child abductors, the child killers, they don’t stop. Ever. Not until we stop them.
He realised that nothing else mattered now. Not his own feelings, not Diana. Even his worries about his own family. Nothing mattered but this. There was no time for anything else.
He lifted the phone, called the station and got the number for the West Mercia force.
After he had talked to DCI Phipps, he would ring Ernesto.
Venice, too, would have to wait.