Jonny sat at the table with Frankie and Shannon. ‘He came back one night a couple of months ago. Said you’d sent him to give her a note at the wine bar or something.’ Frankie nodded. ‘It sounds like you were the one playing silly games, Mum.’
‘Cora didn’t want me to have any contact with her. Nobody was to see us together in case they thought she was showing me preferential treatment over the job.’ Frankie realised how ludicrous it all sounded, how clever Cora had been in distancing herself.
‘And we know it all turned out to be a hoax,’ said Jonny. ‘Henry thought something was a bit wrong. After he gave her the envelope, he followed her to find out where she lived. He was pretty sure he saw someone spying on him from one of the top flats. He was convinced it was Cora.’
‘Why didn’t he tell us any of this?’
Shannon couldn’t believe what her brother was saying. ‘Right from the beginning when she brought him back, he liked Cora. And she did save him in Brighton.’
Jonny remained silent.
‘She did, Jonny. Shannon is right.’ Frankie didn’t like the way that Jonny seemed to be shifting the whole story.
‘Yes, she did. Though Henry did say that when she reached him, he found it difficult at first to know whether she was trying to pull him out of the water or push him under.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ Frankie was fast losing patience. ’Why would she do that? She’d hardly be likely to drown him in front of us.’
Jonny looked his mum straight in the eye. ‘Nobody would have known. She would just have failed to save him. What if she was going to drown him and something made her change her mind?’
The three of them sat, unspeaking, at the kitchen table. Shannon broke the silence. ‘You gotta admit it, Mum. Something’s wrong. All this mystery about the job, and now this.’
‘It wouldn’t do any harm to go up to Parkside Tower and take a look around. See if we can find any trace of her.’ Jonny looked at both of them.
‘It’s ten o’clock at night. Your brother is missing. The police are dealing with it. My nerves are in shreds, and you want the three of us to go snooping around a block of flats up near the park?’
***
Keeping up with Jonny and Shannon caused Frankie to break into a slow trot as they made their way over to the park. ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m a mother of three acting like one of the Famous Five.’
‘I think it’s gonna be fun,’ Shannon said as she strode ahead with Jonny.
‘Fun?’ Frankie fought for breath. Talking and walking wasn’t a good idea. ‘Your younger brother’s gone missing again. This time he’s been lost by a bloody policeman. God knows what’s happened. I’m on the point of a nervous breakdown and you think it’s fun?’
‘Let’s just keep our heads over this.’ In the time since his revelation of Henry’s previous visit to the block of flats, Jonny seemed to have grown up.
‘We all know he’s been there before when he first met Cora.’ There was a bitter impatience in Frankie’s voice.
She could see her breath making little clouds in front of her as she slogged her way up Overbury Road. They soon reached the junction of Parkside and the high street and stopped to gaze up at Parkside Tower.
‘If we find anything, whatever it is, we’re going down to the police station first thing in the morning. We’re not dealing with this on our own.’ Frankie was adamant. She’d insisted they rang the police before leaving the house. The number she had for PC Ashley had gone straight to voicemail, so she’d rung the police station. ‘Langley Park police station now operates on reduced hours between 7.30am and 9pm. For urgent enquiries outside these hours, please redial and call 999.’
‘I don’t believe it. The police station is on bloody voicemail.’
There were one or two lights on in the hallway of the block in front of them. Up on the top floor, a light glowed behind curtains. They crossed the road and stood at the entrance to the driveway. The glass doors were closed.
Frankie was not happy. Out of breath from the walk, and now no way in. ‘I said this wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Sssh.’ Jonny waved his hand at Shannon and Frankie. They crouched down behind the wall. The front door to the flats opened and a man left the block in the opposite direction. Scuttling across the grass like a member of the Special Forces Boat Squad, Jonny hurled himself at the front door and managed to get a foot inside to stop it closing. He turned round and whistled loudly. Two heads peeped over the wall.
‘This is all getting silly,’ hissed Frankie.
Shannon jumped up and ran across the grass to join her brother in the hallway. Frankie took a deep breath and wobbled after them.
They stood in the centre of the hall. On the wall on the right-hand side were mailboxes with flat numbers and surnames. No box had the name Walsh on it, and two of the boxes had no names at all.
‘We don’t know her name was Walsh. It could be any of these flats.’ Frankie felt this was wrong. Anxious though she was about Henry, she had a sudden chill that it would result in no good.
‘We can only try.’ Grabbing a handful of flyers from the ledge above the mailboxes, Jonny pushed the button on the lift. When the doors opened, he jumped in. He turned to his mum and sister. ‘You coming?’