“She’ll be out with her protest banners again, then?” Thackeray asked, though with affection.
“‘Fraid so,” Laura said. “She’s already in the whiz-kid Spencer’s bad books for trying to get him to fund the IT project up on the Heights that keeps getting trashed. You know, Spencer said something very odd about that. Wasn’t Barry Foreman the guy with the twins who nearly got shot out at Benwell Lane last year? The security company boss?”
“What about him?” Thackeray asked, hoping that Laura’s antennae would not pick up the spark of excitement she had fanned into life.
“Spencer said he wanted to work with “the youth”. Has he taken up philanthropy or something? I mentioned it to Ted Grant and he seemed to think Foreman was God’s gift to the poor and needy too. Not the impression I got when I met him, I must say.”
“Jack Longley told me Foreman had got himself involved in the regeneration committee up there,” Thackeray said carefully. “But I thought it was a donation they were after rather than anything more hands-on.”
“Ted Grant’s got himself appointed onto that too,” Laura said. “Are they recruiting the great and the good, or just those who like to imagine they are?”
“The rich and the influential, more like,” Thackeray suggested. “And Grant will be a useful ally to have if there’s going to be a lot of protest up there.”
“I’d like to be able to say that my respected editor couldn’t be bought but I reckon that’s wishful thinking. He’s never been out looking for the radical campaigning journalism awards, hasn’t Ted. And he’s done his damndest to make sure none of the rest of us are in the running either.”
“With limited success in your case,” Thackeray said, not quite able to keep a note of disapproval out of his voice. “So is this your next campaign then? Hands off the Heights? Save our local eyesore?”
Laura drained her drink and gave Thackeray one of her most beatific smiles.
“You’re pushing your luck, Chief Inspector,” she said. “No one’s going to mind if they blow those flats up tomorrow. It’s what happens next that matters.”
He got up and planted a kiss on the top of her copper curls.
“Let me get you a sandwich,” he said. “And then you can tell me how Joyce is going to lead her troops into battle against the town hall. All we poor coppers’ll get is the blame when the protests turn nasty and a few rioters get their heads clouted.” Laura watched him shoulder his way through the lunch-time crowds with a rugby player’s ease, and felt a sudden surge of emotion. She knew how determinedly Thackeray wanted to protect her but she wondered if he knew how she too felt that protective urge, not to shield him from physical harm, which he if anyone, she guessed, could cope with, but from the sort of damage which his marriage had inflicted. There came a point in any relationship, she thought, when it became almost impossible to envisage life without the other half of it, and she guessed she had reached that point with Thackeray. Although whether that resolved anything in the long term she was less sure. You might cleave to a rock, but that didn’t mean that in the end your grip might not slip and the tide dash you to pieces on its jagged edges.
Michael Thackeray did not go straight back to his office after lunch. Instead he picked up his car, made a call on his mobile and headed out of town to a pub set back from the traffic on the Manchester Road. The man he had arranged to meet was sitting alone at a table at the back of the lounge bar and glanced around anxiously when the policeman came in. He was a small tired-looking individual in a grey suit which had seen better days, his collar dusted with dandruff, his fingers yellowed by nicotine. His pale blue eyes flickered nervously from Thackeray to the other customers in the bar and back again.
“I’m not too keen on meeting like this,” Stanley Wilson said as Thackeray pulled out a stool and sat down opposite him. “I know you did me a favour …”
“And one deserves another, Stanley,” Thackeray said, without a flicker of sympathy.
“You could get me into a lot of trouble.”
“And you could get into a lot of trouble if you’re caught again with an under-age lad. You only got away with it last time because anyone would have taken Malcolm for twenty if he was a day. And he was obviously willing enough.”
“You’d not have got a conviction,” Wilson said bitterly. “Malky wouldn’t’ave hung around for a court case.”
“You were willing to take a chance, were you?”
Wilson shook his head imperceptibly.
“Exactly,” Thackeray said. “So in return for that caution, which was more than you deserved, I need some information. You’re still working for Barry Foreman, are you?”
Wilson nodded gloomily.
“I’m only t’bloody dogsbody in that office,” he muttered. “I don’t get to hear owt important.”
“It’s not Barry’s books I’m interested in at the moment,” Thackeray said, although that was not strictly true. “I wondered if there was any word in the office about his girlfriend? Karen? And the kids?”
Wilson shook his head in some bemusement. “She buggered off, didn’t she? That’s what I heard.”
“With the babies?”
Wilson’s eyes flickered round the room again.
“You can’t imagine him keeping two kids on his tod, can you?” he asked. “Word is they weren’t his, any road.”
“So Barry hasn’t talked about the twins since Karen left?” Thackeray persisted.
“He never talked about them much before she left,” Wilson said. “I reckon Rottweilers’d be more chuffed to be dads. Funny thing was, he seemed to be quite looking forward to it before it happened. He must have thought they were his then, mustn’t he? But after, he were wild about summat. He never said nowt. He never does, does ‘e. But you could tell he had one o’them moods on ’im. That’s the time to keep your head down wi’Barrry. He’s an evil bastard when he’s crossed.”
“Did you ever see him with Karen? Or the twins?”
“Nah,” Wilson said, lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of the previous one. “He’s not the sort who’d bring kids to the office, is he? Not your new man.” Wilson sniggered, choking on his cigarette smoke. “Karen used to come in now and then,” he added, wiping tears from his eyes. “She came in once in a right mood. You could hear them at it all over the office. Summat about her credit card being withdrawn.”
“When was that?” Thackeray asked, his eyes sharpening. “Before the twins were born or after?”
Wilson screwed up his face as if in pain and allowed Thackeray to refill his pint glass at the bar before he came up with a reply. He took a long pull at his drink.
“After they arrived, I reckon. I remember her being pregnant. Like a barrel, she were. But not this time. She had one of them slinky trouser suits on, tight fit, belly button on show, all that. Back to normal, you might say. Looked as if she’d been shopping. It must have been after t’kids were born. It’s not that long ago.”
“And that’s the last time you saw her?”
Wilson nodded.
“I want you to ask around and see if anyone else has seen Karen - or the babies - since then,” Thackeray said. Wilson turned his glass on the wet ring it had made on the table and looked dubious.
“Ask around who, Mr. Thackeray?” he asked. “They’ll think I’m soft in t’head. Why would I be asking around after Barry’s tart? Me, of all people?”
“Keep it casual,” Thackeray said. “The women in the office always know what’s going on with the boss’s love life. Keep your ears open and see what you can pick up. The girls’ll trust you, won’t they? I want to know if Karen was seen in Bradfield later than that row over the credit card. OK?”
“Summat in it for me, then, is there?” Wilson avoided Thackeray’s eyes and his voice took on a whining note.
“You’ve had all you’ll get out of me,” Thackeray said, getting to his feet. “Call me on my mobile if you hear anything of interest.” He scribbled the number on a beer mat and thrust it towards Wilson. “I’ve not forgotten Malcolm, Stanley, even if you have.”