33

Chris and I walked back up the drive in silence, save for the rhythmic crunch of gravel.

When we were sitting inside the car Chris turned to me with a hopeful expression on his face. ‘Looks like we’re making progress.’

‘Why would our brother be selling drugs?’ I asked as I thought through what Gina told us.

‘He disappears, then the next time he’s seen he’s a dealer. There’s something wrong with that picture,’ said Chris with an anxious expression.

‘What do you mean?’ I was puzzled.

‘It’s quite common for criminals to use children to trap other children. Robert would trust another kid but run a mile if an adult approached him.’

‘But why trap him?’

‘Well, according to Gina, Robert was a small boy – pretty, with blond hair.’

The implication of this crystallised in my mind. ‘No,’ I said.

Chris’s face took on a slumped, grey expression. ‘There’s a market for everything, John.’ With that, he switched on the engine and we drove off.

Soon we were on the M8, driving past the airport and on into the city.

‘Fancy a detour before I take you home?’ Chris asked.

‘Depends,’ I said.

‘Elsa Brown. In that brain of hers there’s going to be a detail she’s overlooked. Something that might help us find Thomas. And Robert.’

Twenty minutes later we were walking up Elsa’s path, a fine drizzle settling on our heads and shoulders, our breath mingling in a cloud in the air in front of us.

Chris knocked at the door, setting the dog off.

‘No one’s getting in here unnoticed,’ I said.

We heard Elsa’s footfall approaching the door and her voice as she talked to the dog. ‘Who the hell is knocking on my door at this time of night?’ The chain was rattled into position, then the door opened a little and a portion of her face appeared.

‘John Docherty? Everything okay?’

‘Got a minute, Mrs Brown?’ I answered.

She threw the door open wide and ushered us in. ‘Quick, before anyone sees you.’

We did as we were asked. The dog was silent now, as if it recognised us.

As we sat down in the living room I spotted a small bunch of flowers on the mantelpiece that weren’t there when we visited earlier, and a birthday card.

‘Happy birthday, Mrs Brown,’ I said.

‘Thanks, son,’ she replied. ‘I try to forget birthdays now. They feel more like a harbinger of doom than a reason to celebrate.’ She motioned to the dog and it jumped up on to her lap, circled and then lay down.

‘You helped us make a connection the other day, Mrs Brown,’ said Chris. ‘We went to see Gina Marinello.’

‘Oh.’ The dog gave out a little bark, as if it was a fur-covered weather vane for Mrs Brown’s emotional state.

‘Do you remember her?’ Chris asked, casually.

‘A little,’ Elsa replied. ‘She was a pretty wee thing. Her grandad doted on her.’

‘She took over the business, eh?’

‘And sold it,’ Elsa replied. ‘Clever woman, right enough. There’s few that can make that game work nowadays.’ The dog lay its head back down.

‘When we were here, we said that we had found the names of other boys who had vanished around the same time as Thomas. One of them was called Robert Green.’

Elsa’s hand stilled in its movement over the dog. ‘And?’

‘Turns out he was Gina Marinello’s boyfriend.’

The dog gave off a low growl, and Elsa shushed it.

‘Did you ever meet him?’ Chris asked, head tilted to the side, hands relaxed on his lap.

Then Elsa’s demeanour changed, as if she’d briefly run out of patience. With us or with herself, I couldn’t say.

‘So that was his name,’ she sighed and with some effort shifted in her seat, as if accessing these memories was causing her physical pain. ‘Robert Green? You know how some kids have “victim” written all over them?’ she asked. ‘It’s in the way they walk. The way they hold themselves? He was one of them.’

The dog issued a series of high-pitched yips. ‘Dolly, quiet,’ Elsa said sharply. I’d thought I’d had the measure of the woman, but now I wasn’t so sure. When she continued talking, her reserve was back, and the frightened, frail woman we first encountered was back in the room.

‘Seth, he called himself. The man who took your Thomas.’ She held a hand to her mouth, fingers trembling as if trying to stop the words from flowing. ‘He’d disappear for months on end and then suddenly appear, demanding I set him up with more children.’ Her head fell forwards and she started crying.

Neither Chris nor I made a sound. There was nothing we could say to make her feel better about what had happened in the past.

When she recovered her composure she began to talk again. ‘Green, you said his name was? Robert? He was a really pretty wee boy. I didn’t like to think about what Seth had in store for him. But your brother…’ she looked at me ‘…he had street smarts, Seth said. He liked the boy’s gumption. My impression was he intended to move Robert on. He said something about having an order for a blond boy.’ She paused at this and slowly shook her head as if disbelieving that she had stood by and done nothing to stop this from happening. ‘But it looked to me that he was grooming Thomas for something else.’

At this, my hope for Thomas was rekindled. ‘What do you think that could have been?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t matter,’ she replied with a weak grin. ‘The last service station before London, Seth stopped to allow the boys a chance to go to the loo, and they legged it.’

‘Good,’ I said.

‘No, not good,’ she replied. ‘Seth was furious. I’d never seen him so angry, and there was no chance he was letting it go. He kept looking for them until he found them. Reason being, if the blond boy ever made his way back home and Marinello found out he was his precious little Gina’s boyfriend and had been abducted, Seth was fucked.’ As I heard the word I mentally recoiled from it. I didn’t care about bad language, but coming out from this woman’s mouth among the doilies and children’s photographs it curdled in the air.

‘So, next time he was back up this way, Seth took pains to tell me he’d found them both and…’ She steeled herself before going on. ‘He said they’d never be running anywhere ever again.’ Her eyes had a look of finality about them.

‘Jesus,’ I whispered, shuddering at the implications of this. I opened my mouth to ask another question, while shrinking from the possible answer.

‘He didn’t go into any detail.’ Elsa guessed where I was about to go. ‘But he left me under no illusions.’

I closed my eyes, feeling emotion swell within me. Poor Thomas.

‘About old man Marinello?’ Chris asked. ‘You said if word got back to him, Seth was fucked?’

‘Mr Marinello was a businessman, first and foremost, but people learned the hard way never to cross him or his family.’

In the car, driving back along the motorway towards the West End, Chris looked over at me with a defiant expression.

‘Seth didn’t tell her definitively that Thomas was dead,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but you could see it in her face. She was left in no doubt.’

We fell back into silence for a while.

‘You okay?’ Chris asked at last.

‘It feels like Elsa unburdened herself to us there. I hope she feels better for it.’

‘Mmm.’

‘What does that mean?’

He shot me a look. ‘It means I think she was acting as if she was unburdening herself.’

‘I don’t get you.’ I thought about her story. About the debt and being trapped in a hellish situation with this man, forcing her to pass on kids. Added to that her genuine contrition for her sins and her attempts to make reparation by taking up foster care.

‘She was up to her armpits in all that stuff. Victim my arse.’

‘Cynic.’

‘Why not tell us all of that during our first visit? In my experience people who parcel out information like that are stalling.’ He shook his head. ‘Whatever went on back then she’s up to her neck in it.’

I was back in that room, watching her tears, the way her hands slowly twisted round each other. To me her remorse seemed genuine.

‘Perhaps she was,’ I conceded. ‘But she’s implicating herself in a terrible crime. Why do that if she wasn’t feeling guilty and looking to make some kind of amends?’

‘It’s her birthday, yeah?’ Chris added, looking unconvinced.

‘Aye.’

‘Foster carers make a huge difference in their kids’ lives. Huge. She told us she had dozens and dozens of kids through her door in all her years as a foster carer, yet she only had one birthday card.’ He turned slightly and raised his eyebrows at me. ‘One card. That was it. If she was so good with the kids why have none of them kept in touch with her?’