Peter Moon picked up his mug and sat back on the sofa, one leg crossed over the other. ‘I haven’t seen that passport for years. Have you, son?’
Richard sniffed. ‘Don’t think so, Dad.’
‘In fact, have you seen it since that break-in?’
‘Eh?’
‘Not that you’ve needed it, you being the way you are. Don’t need a passport to get to the television set and back, do you, son? But have you seen it since the break-in?’
‘No, Dad.’ Richard shook his head very slowly, as if the effort might wear him out.
‘What break-in?’ said Caffery.
‘Some lowlife did the window at the back. Had away that much stuff I didn’t know if I was coming or going.’
‘Did you report it?’
‘With the way you’d have dealt with it? No disrespect, but it never crossed my mind. You lot’ve got a fine line in ignoring people. A diploma in looking the other way. Then, of course, the fire happened and that put things out of our heads for while. You know – the way a fire that destroys your life will.’
Caffery was studying Richard. His face was too loaded with flesh to give much away but his father had a con’s face, pure and simple, the look of someone with serious form. Yet there was nothing on the CRB check that flagged them up. ‘This fire – it’ll be in our records, I take it?’
‘Too effing right it will. Arsonist. Not nice. Council paid to have the place redone, but a bit of paint? That was never going to undo what happened.’
‘Finished Mother,’ Richard whispered breathlessly, ‘didn’t it, Da? Finished her.’
‘She survived the fire, but couldn’t take what it did to us as a family. Finished you too, son, didn’t it, in a way?’
Richard tipped his weight on to his left buttock, breathing hard at the effort. ‘S’pose it did.’
‘Smoke inhalation.’ Peter Moon’s knee was suddenly twitching, jumping up and down as if he had a motor running in his body. ‘Lung damage, asthma, plus, of course, the –’ he made inverted commas with his fingers ‘– cognitive and behavioural problems. They came from the carbon monoxide. Makes him moody – depressed. Makes him sit around day after day watching the telly and eating. Crisps and Twix bars. Pot Noodle if he’s on a health kick.’
‘I do not sit around all day.’
‘You do, son. You do nothing. And that’s what’s got you to the state you’re in.’
Caffery put his hand up. ‘We’re going to stop now.’ He put his mug down and got to his feet. ‘Under the circumstances I’m going to give you a choice. You can either accompany me to the station or—’
‘You’ll take us there over my dead body. My son hasn’t been out of the flat in over a year and he’s not going now. It’ll kill him.’
‘Or I’ll leave one of my men here. Just in case that burglar suddenly gets Christian on us and decides to return the passport to its rightful owner, eh?’
‘We’ve got nothing to hide. And my son needs to go to bed now.’ Peter Moon got to his feet and went to stand in front of his son. He hoisted his braces up on to his shoulders and bent at the waist, his arms out. ‘Come on, son. You stay out here for too long and it’ll be the death of you. Come on.’
Caffery watched Richard, sweating in his vest and jogging trousers, put his arms up to meet his father’s. He watched the sinews in the older man’s arms stretch and harden as he hauled the weight off the sofa, heard the soft exhalation of effort.
‘Need some help?’
‘No. Been doing it years. Come on now, lad. Let’s get you to bed.’
Caffery, Turner and the agency manager watched in silence as the son was lifted to his feet. It shouldn’t have been possible for this small guy, with his bald head and stooped back, to do it. But he lifted Richard to his feet and half carried him, step by painful step, to the corridor.
‘Follow them,’ Caffery murmured to Turner. ‘Make sure they haven’t got a mobile on them. I’ll send a support officer up to take over. Then I want you back at the office. Do a complete search on them. Criminal records on the dad – every logged incident relating to this address. And find out about that fire – if there really was one. I want them cross-referenced on HOLMES and a list of every known associate. Wring them dry.’
‘Will do.’
Turner headed for the door to follow the Moons, leaving Caffery and the manager together. Caffery felt in his pocket for his keys. He ignored the tobacco pouch sitting there like a bomb. For the first time in ages he was thinking about his own parents, wondering where they were and what they were doing. He hadn’t kept track of them for years and now he wondered if they were old enough for infirmity to have set in. And if they were, who was helping whom when it came time at the end of the day to struggle to bed?
He decided his father would be helping his mother. She had never got over losing Ewan and she never would. She’d always need help.
That was just the way it was.
42
It was gone seven. Cory hadn’t made an appearance, but Janice didn’t care. She’d had a great afternoon. Truly great – under the circumstances. Prody had been as good as his word and had stayed on. He hadn’t watched television or made phone calls but had spent most of the time sitting on the floor with Emily, playing snakes and ladders and ‘Tell me’. Emily thought Prody was hystericaclass="underline" she’d used him as a climbing frame, charging into him, hanging on to his shoulders and pulling herself up by his hair in a way that would have infuriated Cory. Now Nick had gone, Emily was in the bath, supervised by her grandmother, and Janice was in the kitchen with Prody. The salmon was in the oven.
‘I think you’ve got kids.’ Janice was using her thumbs to push the cork out of the bottle of prosecco they’d bought in Marks & Spencer. ‘You’re, you know, sort of natural.’
‘Yeah, well . . .’ He shrugged.
‘Yeah, well?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you need to explain that to me.’ She popped the cork, poured the wine into two of the tumblers she’d discovered in the back of a cupboard and handed one to him. ‘Come on. The salmon’s got a bit longer to go, so we’re going into the living room and you’re going to tell me all about “Yeah, well”.’
‘Am I?’
She smiled. ‘Oh, yes. Indeed you are.’
In the living room, Prody pulled the mobile out of his pocket, switched it off and sat down. The room was strewn with Emily’s toys. Ordinarily Janice would have raced around tidying up so that the place wasn’t a mess when Cory got home. Today she sat with her shoes off, her feet curled under her and her arm on a cushion. To start with, Prody needed prompting. These were things he didn’t like talking about, he said, and, anyway, didn’t she have enough problems of her own?
‘No. Don’t worry about it. It helps keep my mind off my own situation.’
‘It’s not a pretty picture.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Well . . .’ He gave an awkward smile. ‘It goes like this. My ex got full custody of the kids. It never went to court because I pulled out of the case, gave way to what she wanted. She was going to tell the court I’d been beating her and my sons ever since they were born.’
‘Had you?’
‘I smacked the eldest once.’
‘What do you mean, “smacked”?’
‘On the back of his legs.’
‘That’s not beating him.’
‘My wife was desperate to get out. She’d met someone else and wanted the boys. She got friends and family to lie for her. What could I do?’
‘The kids would have said if it wasn’t true, wouldn’t they?’
Prody gave a small, harsh laugh. ‘She got them to lie too. They went to a solicitor and told him I was hitting them. As soon as they did that everyone was on her side – the social workers, even the teachers.’
‘But why would the children lie?’
‘It wasn’t their fault. She told them she’d hate them, take away their pocket money, if they didn’t. And if they did there’d be a trip to Toys R Us. That sort of thing. I know because my oldest told me. He sent me a letter two weeks ago.’ Prody pulled a piece of folded blue paper out of his pocket. ‘He said he was sorry what he’d told people but Mum had promised him a Wii.’