He talked about himself too. He told me that he used to play the violin, that his mother had been a concert-class performer, and his home had been full of music as a child. He told me that work was going well, and that he’d just decided to specialise in general paediatric surgery. I got a sense that his interest in all things was intense, thoughtful and absorbing, whether it was music, architecture, or the small bodies and lives of his patients. He had a rare sensitivity.
The concert began. A violinist, dressed in black, stood centre stage and, with utmost care, he freed the first few notes from his instrument, and they hung crisply in the air around us. He played with an elegance that captivated and seduced, and I felt John relax beside me. When his hand brushed mine and he didn’t move it away, it seemed to give me balance. When he gently held my fingers in his, it felt like a counterpoint to the emotional intensity of the music, and also an encouragement to let myself feel it, become absorbed by it.
This memory: the music, the feelings, flashed through my mind in the car. It was as if I wanted to rewind my life back to that point, and start it over again, to hold on to that perfect moment, so that what came afterwards wouldn’t turn to crap, wouldn’t lead us to now. Which was impossible, of course, because the memory was gone as soon as it arrived. The reality was that instead of comforting me, the cold grip of John’s fingers felt desperate and futile, just as mine must have done to him.
The traffic stayed slow as we travelled through the city centre: taillights and signposts, concrete shapes and scud clouds under a granite sky. The River Avon disappeared and then reappeared on the other side of the road, brown and choppy still, a shopping trolley abandoned on the far bank. I kept my eye on the water, tracking its progress into the city, because I couldn’t stand to look at the people outside the car, all the people who were having an ordinary Monday at the start of an ordinary week, the people who knew where their children were.
The police station was a large concrete cuboid building, Brutalist in style. It was three storeys high, with tall rectangular windows set into each level at regular intervals, like enlarged arrow slits in a castle wall. In typography from around half a century ago, the sign announcing where we’d arrived sat on a thin concrete rectangle above the doors and stated simply: KENNETH STEELE HOUSE.
The inside of the building was startlingly different. It was state of the art, open plan, busy and slick. We were asked to wait on a set of low-slung sofas by a reception area. Nobody gave us a second glance. I went to the loo. I barely recognised myself in the mirror. I was gaunt, white, a spectre. There was mud on my face, and the gash across my forehead was livid and crusty with blood that had strands of my hair caught in it. I looked dirty and unkempt. I tried to clean myself up but it wasn’t very effective.
When I got back to reception, John was still on the sofa, elbows on his knees, head hanging. I took my place beside him. A uniformed officer with a pink face and thinning grey hair came out from behind the front desk and approached us across the wide foyer.
‘It won’t be long,’ he said. ‘There’s somebody on their way down to fetch you just now.’
‘Thank you,’ John said.
JIM
Kenneth Steele House is where I work. It’s the CID headquarters for Avon and Somerset Constabulary. It’s not a pretty building from the outside, and neither is its location. It’s on a strip of trade and industrial estates behind Temple Meads Station in St Philip’s Marsh. It’s a flat inner city area with an isolated, wasteland feel because there’s no housing in the vicinity, and its boundaries are the canal and the River Avon. There’s CCTV everywhere and a fair bit of barbed wire.
I was at my desk by 08.05. I noticed the atmosphere straight away. There was none of the usual Monday morning chatter, only a tension about the place that you get when a big case is in. Mark Bennett – same rank as me but about a hundred years older – popped up from behind the partition that separated his desk from mine before I’d even turned on my PC. ‘Scotch Bonnet wants to see you,’ he said. ‘Soon as.’
Bennett had a bald shiny head, a thick fleshy neck and the eyes of a bull terrier. He looked like a bruiser. Truth was, he was anything but. We’d gone out for a drink once, when I first arrived in Avon and Somerset, and he told me that he’d never gone as far or as fast as he’d wanted to in CID. Then he told me that he thought his wife didn’t love him any more. I’d got out of there as fast as I could. You don’t want that mindset to infect you. ‘Scotch Bonnet’ was Bennett’s nickname for our DCI, Corinne Fraser. It was because she was Scottish, and female, and could be fiery. It wasn’t especially clever or funny. Nobody else used it.
Fraser was in her office. ‘Jim,’ she said. ‘Close the door. Take a seat.’
She was immaculately turned out as usual in a sharp business suit. She was eccentric looking, with frizzy grey hair that didn’t suit her short fringe and puffed out over her ears, but she also had an attractive, delicate face, and implacable grey eyes that could look right through you, or pin you to a wall. I sat down opposite her. She didn’t waste time:
‘As of zero eight hundred hours this morning I’ve got an eight-year-old boy who has almost certainly been abducted from Leigh Woods. We’ve got multiple scenes already, the weather’s been against us, and we’ve lost more than twelve hours since he first disappeared. We’re going to have the press trying to crawl up our arses before lunchtime. I’m going to need a deputy SIO to take on a lot of responsibility. Are you up to it?’
‘Yes, boss.’
I felt blood rush into my cheeks. It was what I’d hoped for: a high-profile case, a senior position. I’d been in CID in Avon and Somerset for three years, putting in the hours, proving myself, waiting for this moment. There were DIs above me in the pecking order, older, just as ambitious. Mark Bennett a case in point. They could have got the role, but it was my time, my chance. Did I think of turning it down? No. Did I think it was going to be a minefield? Maybe. But the words that were doing cartwheels in my head were these: bring it on. Bring. It. On.
A big part of the thrill was getting to work with Fraser. She was tough and clever, one of the best. It was well known that she’d grown up on a shitty council estate in Glasgow. As soon as she could leave home, she’d moved as far away as possible so that she could train as a police officer and start a new life. Problem was, while she was a young DC she’d ended up married to a DCI from Scotland Yard who reeked so badly of corruption that even the Met had to get rid of him eventually. In his spare time he’d knocked her about. She’d ended up in the hospital once but her old man was never charged. The police looked after their own in those days, so long as they were white males.
Her good fortune was that her husband had died before going to trial for corruption. He had a heart attack at the pub. He was dead before he hit the floor. She’d responded by moving to Avon and Somerset as a DS and shooting up the ranks with a combination of astute political play and detective work that was respected for its thoroughness. She was the first woman ever to be made a DCI in Avon and Somerset, and must have been one of the first in England. She wasted no words and her authority was natural. It was the right of someone who’d survived her wilderness years and come out tougher and wiser. She didn’t tolerate whingeing and she didn’t tolerate bullying.
‘First job: interview the parents,’ Fraser said.
‘Yes, boss. Where are they?’
‘At the scene.’
‘Is uniform taking them home?’
‘Not yet.’ She thought about it, tapped her pen on the desk. ‘We need to be sensitive, that’s paramount, Jim, but I’m inclined to bring them in here. Teas and coffees on our terms.’