‘Great guy,’ Sam said. ‘He’s been a real asset to the team.’
If he was that great, how come they’d chosen a newbie over him, then? Obviously Dr Hill had screwed up somehow and ended up being dumped. ‘I’ll do my best to fill his shoes,’ he said.
Sam’s face broke into a grin that carved deep lines round his mouth. ‘Apart from anything else, you’re about a foot taller than Tony. You’d look bloody silly in his shoes. Just make yourself at home here, I’ll sort out a minder for you.’ He walked over to one of the other desks and picked up the phone.
Tim took out the pad where he’d started to make notes for his profile. So far, nothing had really turned out the way he’d expected. Now he needed to stamp his authority on the area of this investigation where he could make an impact. Carol Jordan had made it clear he wasn’t high on her respect totem pole. If anyone could help them crack this case, it was Tim Parker. It was time to show DCI Ma’am he wasn’t someone to be taken lightly.
Tony yawned his way downstairs and into the kitchen. The effect of the Worcester house clearly only worked when he was actually there. It had gone one o’clock when he’d reached Bradfield but not even the drive or the late hour had been enough to provoke the sort of deep and even sleep he’d experienced the night before. He put the coffee on and parked himself in a kitchen chair. Sitting on top of the usual clutter on the table was the slim chrome recorder he’d brought back from the narrowboat. He’d picked it up and put it down half a hundred times. He’d checked the contents - one audio file - but he hadn’t attempted to listen to it.
The other new addition to the pile was a large manila envelope. Its contents were the result of a search of Arthur Blythe’s desk. Tony rested his fingertips on the envelope and considered it. ‘Coffee first,’ he said aloud. As he fussed with the milk steamer, he wondered where Carol was. Not surprisingly, her flat had been dark when he’d come home. He’d hoped they could get together for coffee this morning, but then he’d heard her car engine in the drive about half an hour before. Either something had landed on her plate at work or she was heading up to the Yorkshire dales to spend the day with her brother Michael and his partner. She’d mentioned the other day that she owed them a visit. It was a shame she wasn’t around. She’d have been fascinated by the contents of the envelope, he was certain.
Coffee to hand he sat down again and emptied the envelope on the table. The urge to compare Arthur’s features to his had sent him back to the house after he’d finished the profile and dealt with Patterson’s questions. In spite of his own dissatisfaction with the work he’d done, the West Mercia detective seemed happy enough. Maybe he’d heard about the events of yesterday morning and he was just eager to get Tony off his patch.
A quick walk through the house had confirmed what Tony had thought. There were no photographs on display anywhere. Arthur wasn’t a man who needed to show off his encounters with celebrity or prove he’d stood in front of the seven wonders of the world. But surely there must be something somewhere, even if it was only a passport or a driving licence?
The obvious place to begin the search was the study. And the starting point had to be the desk. Which of course was locked. Tony studied the bunch of keys he’d been given by the lawyer, but none of them looked as if they would fit the little brass locks in the drawers of the battered and scarred desk. He threw himself into the old wooden swivel chair, spinning himself round in irritation. ‘Where would you keep the desk keys?’ he shouted. ‘Where would you put them, Arthur?’
On the third circuit, he saw them. On a shelf, sitting on top of the books. Obscured by the shelf above if you were standing up, but perfectly visible if you were sitting on the chair. Hidden in plain sight, as in all the best detective novels. Which, Tony noticed, were well represented on the study shelves. Reginald Hill, Ken Follett and Thomas Harris, predictably enough. But also, surprisingly, Charles Willeford, Ken Bruen and James Sallis. No women except for Patricia Highsmith, though. He reached for the keys and started with the top left-hand drawer.
The second drawer on the right was the first to yield anything that wasn’t stationery or bank statements. An old chocolate box sat on top of a pile of paper wallets from photo-processing companies layered with the sort of formal folders you got at weddings and awards ceremonies. Tony opened the chocolate box and found a treasure trove of personal information. Here was Arthur’s birth certificate; cancelled passports; graduation certificate from the college in Huddersfield; a certificate saying he had passed his silver medal in rescue and personal survival at Sowerby Bridge Public Baths; and other gems from which he could construct elements of a life. It was surprisingly moving.
Tony closed the box and placed it on top of the desk. Nobody but him would find meaning in this. He lifted out the bundle of photographs and turned them over, thinking that would bring the oldest to the surface. The first wallet contained twelve deckle-edged prints, a mere two and a half inches by four. Various adults held a baby in their arms, all looking immensely proud. Tony turned them over: Mum with Edmund aged twelve weeks; Dad with Edmund; Gran with Edmund; Uncle Arthur with Edmund. He replaced the photos and carried on. He wasn’t that interested in the baby pictures. They didn’t show what he wanted to see.
He sifted through school photos and the occasional family holiday roll of film, charting Arthur’s progress through childhood. There weren’t many photos of Tony as a child, but he thought he detected similarities. Something about the shape of the head, the cast of the eyes, the line of the jaw.
It seemed to him the resemblance grew through adolescence and hit its strongest point in Arthur’s graduation photo. Sitting there holding his scroll, he looked like Tony’s more relaxed brother. The likeness was striking. But after that, their faces diverged rather than coming closer with age. It was like watching a demonstration of quantum physics or the road less travelled by. The map of his father’s face unfurled over sixty years and told a story of what Tony himself might have been had his experiences been different.
He’d spent a long time with the photographs, just letting them sink in. Thinking about nothing, not feeling much either. Simply accepting them into his consciousness. At last, he selected a dozen or so, from the formal presentation of some golf trophy to a casual shot of three men sitting round a pub table, glasses raised in a toast. Something concrete to have by him. And maybe to show Carol.
And now she wasn’t here to share them with. Well, there would be time for that later, if he was still in a sharing mood.
Tony got up to refill his coffee and turned on the radio as he passed it. The teeth-jarring ident of Bradfield Sound filled the room, the precursor to the news. The announcer’s voice stepped on the tail of the jingle. ‘And on the hour, all you need to know. News from Bradfield Sound, your local information station. Police have confirmed that the body found on Bickerslow Moor was that of missing teenager Seth Viner. Seth was last seen after school on Wednesday. He was supposed to be at a friend’s house for a sleepover but he never made it. Seth is the second Bradfield teen to be found dead in a remote location in the past week. Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan, the commander of the city’s Major Incident Team, spoke about these terrible murders to Bradfield Sound.’
And then that voice he knew as well as his own. ‘We believe that both Seth Viner and Daniel Morrison were murdered by the same person,’ she said, her voice carefully modulated to suggest respect for the dead as well as the urgency of her investigation. ‘Our deepest sympathy goes out to their families and friends. We’re asking everyone in Bradfield to think back very carefully over the last few days to see if you remember seeing Daniel or Seth on the days they disappeared. We need your help.’