‘We’ve got a match.’ She bent double, gasping.
‘You look as if you’ve just won the Great North Run.’ Porteous forced himself to stay calm, to keep his voice light.
‘Who?’ demanded Stout. When she did not reply immediately he added, almost in a whisper, ‘Is it Carl Jackson?’
By then she had caught her breath. ‘Nah, nothing like. It’s the lad called Michael Grey.’
‘Ah.’ Porteous continued up the stairs, unlocked his door and flicked the kettle on. He waited for Stout to follow.
Chapter Four
Stout stood in the doorway of Porteous’s office.
‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘Not too surprised, no,’ Porteous said. ‘You were right about Sarah Jackson. She does know what happened to her son. But when we talked about the body in the lake she wasn’t bothered, hardly interested. She knew it wasn’t him.’
He made a mug of tea for Eddie, strong, as he knew he liked it, and waved it at him to invite him in. ‘We’ll have to save Carl for another day.’ The words sounded unbelievably trite. ‘I’m sorry, Eddie, I mean it. Now we have to concentrate on Michael Grey, find out everything there is to know about him.’
Porteous could tell the man’s mind and heart weren’t really in it. He was still thinking about the deaf boy everyone had labelled as dumb. When this investigation was over he’d give Eddie his head for a few weeks, let him dig around for a bit. Even if nothing came of it he deserved that much.
Soon it became clear they would find out very little about Michael Grey. Not immediately at least. At first Porteous had thought it would be easy. A piece of piss, he said to himself, though not to Eddie who disapproved of such language. Michael Grey had been fostered to a couple called Brice. Fostering meant Social Services and that meant records as long as your arm – reports for the court, case conferences, personal records kept to cover the back of whichever poor social worker had been in charge of him. There would be details of the natural family at least and of any contact between them and the boy. Michael hadn’t been adopted, so he would still have been officially in care when he disappeared. Some attempt would have been made to trace him.
He sent Eddie to talk to the solicitor who’d triggered the first missing-person report after the foster parents’ death. ‘Find out who benefited from the will in the absence of the boy. Did anyone? Is the cash still being held in trust for him? What happens to it now?’
Stout slunk away like a sulky teenager. As soon as he had gone Porteous made an appointment with the senior social worker on duty at the town hall. The man was prepared to see him at once. The town hall was in the same street and of the same design as the police station – redbrick Victorian Gothic – though it had a depressing concrete and glass extension at the back, where the Social Services department was housed. A small middle-aged man named Jones met Porteous at reception and led him upstairs. They left behind them the screams of an elderly woman, demanding to see her social worker, and the increasingly irate reply of the receptionist who said she would have to wait.
They sat in a cubby-hole looking out on a busy open-plan office where one of the phones always seemed to be ringing. Jones was tidy, with a few wisps of hair combed over a balding pate. He was apologetic. ‘After you phoned I checked our records. I like to think we’re efficient in that department. But we’ve no details of a couple called Brice being registered as foster parents. Nothing at all. No application form, no record of training.’
‘Would you still have the file after all this time?’
‘Oh yes. We go back thirty years. Longer. Child protection, you see. It’s important to know who’s been looking after our children.’
‘Could the Brices have been working for someone else? A charity, perhaps? Another authority?’
‘That’s what I thought!’ He seemed impressed that Porteous had been thinking along the same lines. ‘But I’ve phoned around and I can’t find anyone else in the field who’s heard of them. I’m not saying it’s impossible that they were registered with another agency, but – if it doesn’t sound too big-headed – my contacts are second to none. I’d certainly say it’s unlikely.’
‘You’ll have a record, though, of Michael Grey?’
‘No.’ The man closed his mouth firmly, allowing no question. He sat back in his chair and clasped his hands round his small paunch. He seemed to be delighted by the mystery, and by Porteous’s discomfort.
‘But I gave you his date of birth. We found it in the dental records.’ Porteous could tell he was sounding desperate. That’ll teach me, he thought. A piece of piss.
‘It doesn’t help, I’m afraid. I’ve phoned the court. They keep their own records. No care or supervision order was placed on anyone called Michael Grey in the seventies anywhere in the county.’ He paused, savouring the moment. ‘Social Services were never involved with him either.’
‘But they must have been.’
‘Not necessarily.’ Jones leaned forward, but didn’t elaborate.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘How old was he?’ The tone was patronizing. An infant teacher talking to a particularly thick six-year-old. Just what I deserve, Porteous thought.
‘When we think he went missing? Eighteen.’
‘There you are then.’ Jones leaned back in the chair once more and smirked. ‘Over sixteen and we wouldn’t get involved. He could have been younger than that when he started living with the foster parents, if it was an informal arrangement.’
‘Perhaps you would explain.’ Porteous had never minded eating humble pie. It was surprising how people liked you to grovel. The social worker was loving it.
‘Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Something we come across all the time. Say there’s a single mum with a teenage lad. He starts to run a bit wild. Perhaps it’s nothing that would get him in trouble with the police, but he’s staying out late, skipping school. She begins to feel she’s losing control. Now, it could be that the boy has a good relationship with her parents and they offer to have him to live with them for a while. To take the heat off her until things calm down. That would be fostering of a sort, wouldn’t it? Nothing official. No need for Social Services to be involved even if the lad were under sixteen. In fact that’s usually the last thing a family under stress wants. A nosy cow from the Welfare knocking on the door.’
Porteous smiled.
‘So you’re saying these Brices were probably relatives?’
‘They might have been. Or friends. They might even have been doing it for money. All I can tell you is I don’t think they were official.’
‘Where do you suggest I go from here?’
‘Have you got the name of the school?’
‘Cranford Grammar.’ That too had been in the dental records.
‘Try there then. If it was an informal fostering they’d still have wanted the names of the natural parent. It’s possible that he moved away from home after he started the school. Most problems of that sort start in adolescence. You might even find a couple of teachers who remember him. My kids go there and some of the staff must be close to retirement.’
He led Porteous down the concrete stairs. In the waiting-room the old lady had begun to sob.
Cranford Grammar had since become Cranford High, and when Porteous phoned the school from his office he was told that it was the last day of the summer term. The secretary sounded on the verge of hysteria. In the background he heard the high-pitched yelps of children, an impatient teacher calling for mislaid reports, a yell for silence.
‘It really isn’t a good time.’
Then he explained that he was running a murder inquiry and suddenly her attitude changed. Porteous had noticed it before. It wasn’t a desire to be a good citizen and help the police. Murder had the same effect as the mention of celebrity, of a pop idol or football star. She was excited. Later she would boast to her friends that she had been involved.