Lazybones

'Fighting over who was going to get the biggest room, I suppose?'

She looked quickly up at Thorne. 'No. We'd sorted out their bed rooms early on, before we moved…'

'What happened?' Thorne said.

'They needed to have their own space, you understand?'

'What happened, Mrs. Noble?'

'Nobody heard them go, nobody saw a thing. They crept out like ghosts…'

'When did anybody find out they'd gone?'

'We were all over the place, you can imagine, trying to get everything together. Trying to find the tea bags and the bloody kettle or what have you.' She began to pick at a fingernail. 'It was around dinner time, I think. Can't remember exactly. It was after dark…'

'So what did you think?'

'We didn't really think anything at first. They always went out a lot. They were very independent, always off somewhere together. Mark always looked after Sarah, though. He always took care of his sister.'

Thorne glanced sideways at Holland. 'When were the police called?'

Holland asked.

'The next morning. Obviously we knew there was something wrong when they hadn't come back. When their beds hadn't been slept in…'

Thorne leaned forward. He took one of the fancy Italian biscuits that came with the coffee and broke it in half, asking the question casually. 'Who called the police?'

There was no hesitation. 'Roger. Well, actually, he went down to the station himself. He thought things might get handled faster if he went there personally, and he was right. He said they got straight on it. Two of them came to the house while I was out searching in the park and round the local streets.'

'Roger told you they came round?'

She nodded. 'They had a look in the kids' bedrooms, you know?

Asked all the normal questions. Took some photos away with them…'

Thorne looked at Holland. A reminder about getting photos of Mark and Sarah for Brigstocke's digital ageing plan. Holland picked up on it, nodded and made a note. Thorne popped the rest of the biscuit into his mouth, chewed for a few seconds before speaking again.

'Did the police presume the children had run away right from the start?'

'Well, that was the problem, wasn't it? Everything was in boxes, all over the show. It was hard to work out straight away if they'd taken anything with them…'

'Eventually, though,' Thorne said. 'That was what they must have thought.'

'Yes, after a day or two I worked out which clothes were missing. There was some money gone as well, but it took me a while to realise. I thought maybe I'd mislaid it somewhere in all the moving. Once the police knew about the children, about what they'd been through, Roger said they started treating it as a runaway thing more than anything else…'

'What did they do?'

'Very thorough, they were. Up and down the country. Appeals for information, searches at all the stations, that sort of thing. Roger got updates from them all the time. They were taking it very seriously, Roger said, for the first week or two, anyway.'

'Roger said…'

'That's right. He went down and nagged them every day. Twice a day, sometimes, demanding to know what they were doing.'

'For the first week or two, you said. After that…?'

'Well, they told Roger, a chief inspector actually, told Roger that he was sure the children were safe. They were certain that if, you know, any harm had come to Mark or Sarah, they would have found out. I suppose they meant found a body…'

Thorne saw that the skin below Irene Noble's fingernail had torn and begun to bleed slightly where she'd been picking at it. He watched as she pressed a napkin to her tongue and dabbed at the pinpricks of blood. When she spoke again, it struck him that the telephone voice had gone, and that the Essex accent was coming through strongly. Whether she was unable to keep it up for long or had simply ceased bothering, it was impossible to tell.

'Never having had any of my own,' she said, 'I can't say for sure if I felt anything less because Mark and Sarah weren't mine, weren't my flesh and blood. D'you understand what I'm getting at?' Thorne nodded. 'After the police told Roger they thought the children were safe, it wasn't so bad, you know? We weren't so scared. We just missed them. We got used to missing them eventually…'

'Did you ever see a police officer?' Thorne said. 'In all the time they were looking for Mark and Sarah, did you yourself ever speak to a police officer?'

Thorne had been expecting a pause, perhaps a paling, but instead he got a smile. After a few seconds it wilted a little, and she seemed suddenly sad. Then, as she spoke, her face filled with an affectionate remembrance..

'Roger wanted to shield me from any of it. He did everything, handled it all. Perhaps it was his way of dealing with what had happened, throwing himself into it like he did, taking the responsibility, but I knew he was trying to protect me. He dealt with all the official side of things. The strain of it, of everything that happened and that school business on top of it, drove my husband to an early grave.'

Thorne blinked, took a breath or two. A suspicion, a sense, began to distil into something more potent. 'What school business was that?' he asked.

'Roger worked over at St Joseph's. It was the school where Mark and Sarah would have gone.' She said it casually, like the children had done no more than fail an entrance exam. 'It was just part-time, casual work, but he did all the bits and bobs that needed doing around the place. One day this man comes round, one of the parents, hammering on the door. Says his son's been involved in some kind of incident and mentioned Roger's name. Utter rubbish, of course, the man was on something I think, but it really upset Roger. This lunatic wouldn't leave it and went to the headmaster. The school was keen to keep it low key, which was right, obviously, since it was so stupid, but Roger wanted to do the right thing. He left quietly in the end, rather than upset the children. That was typical of him. It was scandalous, disgraceful that anybody could even suggest… There were always kids round here after school and in the holidays. Always kids in our house…'

'Roger liked children…'

She looked up, her face softening, grateful for Thorne's insight. For his understanding. 'That's right. He would never have admitted it, but I think, deep down, he was always trying to make up for not having Mark and Sarah any more. Being around other kids had been his own way of coping with what happened. Later on, after that unpleasantness, everything started to get on top of him. His heart just packed up in the end…'

'What was your way of coping, Irene?' Thorne said.

'I just prayed the kids were safe,' she said. 'That wherever Mark and Sarah went after they left us, they were out of harm's way…'

It was that sentence which stayed with Thorne, which he thought about as they struggled out of the West End through traffic, inching around Marble Arch, car and passengers overheating more than slightly.

'It was very convenient for Roger Noble,' Holland said. 'The kids going missing when they were between schools. They vanish from all education records…'

'It was certainly handy,' Thorne said.

'They did go missing, didn't they? I'm just thinking out loud…'

Thorne shook his head. 'Noble was responsible for them going, which is why he never reported it, but I don't think it was worse than that. If he killed them, who the hell are we looking for?'

'What are we going to do?' Holland asked. 'Shouldn't we report it?

That fucker could have abused loads of other kids.'

'There's no point. He's long dead. He can't hurt any more kids now.'

'What about her? Do you think she knew?'

Thorne thought about what Irene Noble had said. About praying the kids were out of harm's way. He shook his head. If she had known, she could surely not have said that and kept a straight face. In the Grafton Arms, spitting distance from his flat, Thorne shared several pints and half a dozen games of pool with Phil Hendricks. The beer seemed to have little effect, and he lost five games out of the six.