“Can hear you’re from the North, too,” said the wife, smiling at him in a friendly fashion.
“Me father was,” said Dick. “Or should I say ‘wor’? I can do the accent, and a bit of it has rubbed off onto me. But I come from Cambridge — and all round. I’m a bit of a rolling stone.”
“Can’t be too much of a rolling stone, now you’ve got little Malcolm to consider,” said the husband. “Champion little lad, that. We saw him when we dropped by to say hello to Peggy.”
“Champion’s the word for him,” said Dick. “I call him ‘Captain.’ Can’t remember how that started, but I certainly have to jump when he gives me orders!”
“Colin — two hamburgers and chips on the bar,” called Jack, and Dick resumed his service of the crowded and cheerful bar. He didn’t like it when people commented on his very slight Northern accent. He’d told Peggy early on that he came from Cambridge, and that was a lie he was now stuck with.
He got away from The Cornishman shortly after three, and went straight to pick Malcolm up. Peggy had got her manner under control now, and was friendly and pleasant as always. She looked him in the eye, but was — somehow, was he imagining it? — quite keen for an excuse to look away again. Yes, I am imagining it, said Dick to himself, settling Malcolm onto his shoulders to ride him piggyback to the cottage.
“See you soon, Peggy,” he called. She looked up from the floor where she was playing with one of the other children.
“Oh — yes. Good,” she said.
There is something wrong, thought Dick.
“I think this is a call you should take,” said DC Lackland, and handed the receiver over to Purley.
“DI Purley speaking.”
“Ah, now are you the man who’s in charge of the disappearance of that little boy — the one who was snatched by his father in the Darlington area?”
The voice was pure County Durham.
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, I’m speaking from Briscow in Cornwall.”
“Oh yes?” The heightened interest in his voice was evident.
“That’s right, but we’re from Stockton, so we read about the case in the local newspapers. There wasn’t a great deal in the national papers, was there?”
“No, there wasn’t.” It seemed as if he was being accused of not pressing for more, so he said: “The North is another country.”
“Aye, you’re right. Londoners aren’t interested in what queer folk like us get up to. They’d rather not know. Any road, we’ve been coming to Cornwall for four years on the trot up to now, but this year our cottage was taken, let to a young man and a boy.”
“Oh yes?” Purley was well trained in police neutrality but he couldn’t keep a surge of interest out of his voice.
“Nice-enough-looking fellow, and a lovely little boy. I’m probably way out of order and on the wrong lines altogether, but the little boy is called Malcolm. That was the name of the little boy who was snatched, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. The father is Richard Randall.”
“This man is calling himself Colin Something-or-other. But the boy is Malcolm. I suppose he thought changing it would cause more problems than it would solve. If it is them.”
“This man is not a local, I take it.”
“No, no, of course not. He’s been here since early spring, I believe. And he has a slight Northern accent.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Says he got it from his father. But if you were brought up in Cambridge like he says he was, you wouldn’t have your father’s accent, would you?”
“It sounds unlikely.”
“The story is that the little boy’s mother died in childbirth. We had that from Peggy, his landlady, the woman who minds the nipper while he works at the pub.”
“Right. And Peggy’s name and address are?”
“Peggy Cowley, Lane’s End Cottage, Deacon Street, Briscow, Cornwall.”
“I’m grateful to you, very grateful.”
When he had got the man’s name and address and his Stockton address, too, Purley banged down the telephone in triumph.
“Got him!”
“You haven’t got him at all yet,” said Lackland, who enjoyed playing the spoilsport. “And Malcolm’s a common enough name.”
“I feel a pricking of my thumb,” said Purley, refusing to be dampened. “Get me Launceston police.”
“So how was your day, Captain?” asked Dick, watching Malcolm get his hands very sticky from a jam sandwich. Malcolm, as always, considered at length.
“Jemima was very naughty,” he announced.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” Jemima was one of the other children Peggy minded, and in Malcolm’s opinion she was a Bad Lot.
“She spilt her lemonade and broke the little wooden horse.”
“Good Lord, fancy poor old Peggy having to cope with a naughty little girl like that.”
“She should have smacked her but she didn’t.”
After tea, when Malcolm was absorbed in a jigsaw puzzle of Postman Pat with large but bewildering pieces, Dick said:
“I’m just popping over to Peggy’s, I think we left your pully there.”
“My pully’s in the—” Malcolm began. But his father was already out of the door.
I want this thing sorted out, thought Dick, as he crossed the lane and ran up the bank and onto Peggy’s long back lawn. It can’t wait till tonight. This sort of thing can fester. And if I can’t tell her the truth, I’ll tell her a lie. It won’t be the first time.
Dick had as great a confidence in his ability to fabricate plausible stories as he had in his eye for a robbable house.
He was about to round the side of Peggy’s cottage when he heard voices from outside the front door.
“And when did you say this man and his son took the cottage?”
“Back in March,” came Peggy’s voice, reassuringly normal. “I’d have the precise dates in my records. They stayed a couple of nights bed-and-breakfast, then took the cottage.”
“Are they still there?”
“Yes.”
“What name is the man using?”
“The man’s name is Colin Morton,” came Peggy’s voice emphatically.
“And does he say he’s divorced?” asked the young sergeant, his hard-looking face intimidating, his eyes like deep, cold lakes.
“Colin is a widower,” said Peggy firmly.
“Oh yes? And what does he say his wife died of?”
“His wife died in childbirth. Look, it’s not me you should be asking these questions, it’s him. He’ll have all the papers and things.” Thinking she heard movement from the back garden, she went on talking brightly. “But really I know that’s true. I’ve seen a picture of the poor girl with little Malcolm. Such a nice face she had, pretty but loving, too. Colin keeps that in his wallet, because he doesn’t want the little lad to be reminded of his mother — says that if he’d been a little older when his mother died it would be different, but—”
“And this ‘Colin,’ he’s working locally, is he?” the sergeant interrupted.
“Yes, he’s working lunchtimes at The Cornishman. They think the world of—”
“That can’t bring in much. He is paying you rent for the cottage, is he?”
The implication was brutally obvious. Peggy chattered on, seeming to take no notice, but really she was speaking from the front of her mind only. The back of her mind was remembering the night before. The electricity had fused just as she was making her late-night drink. She had no overnighters in the second bedroom, but something — she was reluctant to analyse precisely what — made her want it fixed that night. Dick had done it before, and made light of it. Surely he wouldn’t mind. It would be the first time... She rummaged in the dark to find her torch in the kitchen drawer, and then set off across the lawn towards the cottage.