‘Do they now?’
He nodded, his chin up, trying to assert confidence.
‘And would an Assassin have a lot of power?’ Her voice lingered mockingly on the sibilants.
‘Yes.’
‘Would an Assassin be a match for a big man like, say, DI Clemo here?’
‘Assassins have their methods. They’re afraid of nobody and everybody fears them.’
‘That’s very clever. Good for you. By the way, are you not curious to know why we’re here?’
‘Is it because of the boy who went missing?’
‘You’ve shown a remarkable lack of interest. Why is that?’
‘It’s nothing to do with me. I didn’t see anything.’
‘What happened to Benedict Finch wouldn’t be one of your secrets then?’
‘I never tell my secrets.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because they’re secret.’ He laughed, a quick, high-pitched sound, a fish gulping air.
‘Or is it perhaps because you’re ashamed of them? You have a previous conviction for exposing yourself, don’t you? I can understand why you’d like to keep something like that under your hat, or should I say under your Assassin’s cape? Probably wise.’
‘I never did it.’
‘That’s not what two little girls who were trying to play a nice game of tennis said. How old do you think they were? I’ll tell you. They were eleven years old, and their nice game was interrupted by you sticking your wee tadger through the netting around the court, was it not?’
‘It’s not how it was. I promise.’
Fraser leaned forward, fixing her gaze on Fount. ‘Did you see Benedict Finch in the woods on Sunday afternoon?’
Fount shuffled his backside across the bed until he was sitting with his back against the wall. He had a sharp Adam’s apple and angry ingrown hairs along his jawline. He said nothing, but there was defiance in his expression.
‘So did you?’ asked Fraser. ‘See Benedict Finch in the woods on Sunday afternoon?’ She hadn’t looked away from him.
Fount crossed his arms. ‘I only answer to the authorities of my kingdom,’ he said.
Fraser snorted. ‘You’ve got three authorities in the room with you now, how much more authority do you want?’
‘I only answer to the authorities of my kingdom.’
‘How about: how did you get home from the woods on Sunday? Nobody saw you after three o’clock.’
‘You don’t understand. I inhabit the Kingdom of Isthcar. I recognise the Isthcarian authorities only. Assassins answer only to the Knights of Isthcar, the Holders of the Hammer of Hisuth.’
‘What? What nonsense is that? You’ll answer to us. Let me tell you something, you’d better grow up, young man, and you’d better do it quickly. We’re investigating the disappearance of a child here. There are two facts we can’t ignore: you were there, and you’ve got previous.’
She stared at him until his eyes dropped. He picked at a frayed hole on the knee of his jeans.
‘Can you tell us anything about what you saw?’ I asked, inserting my words carefully into the stalemate that was brewing, although I felt like wringing his scrawny neck. ‘It would be very helpful.’
Fount closed down his face. He wasn’t going to talk.
‘If I find out later that you know something that could help in the investigation, and you’re not telling us, then you’ll pay for that,’ said Fraser. She got to her feet. ‘Have no doubt about that. Right, we’re finished here for now, but we’re certainly not finished with you.’
‘You can see yourselves out,’ said Fount, to Fraser’s back. There was a hint of a smirk on his face. We paused at the bottom of the stairs when we realised Woodley wasn’t behind us. He’d waited in the doorway of the room.
‘Isthcar,’ he said to Fount. ‘Isn’t that an ancient tribe? From Nordic mythology?’
‘The finest tribe,’ said Fount. ‘The most noble.’
‘It sounds fascinating. Is the game very complex?’ Woodley sounded impressed.
‘To play properly, there’s a lot you have to understand.’
‘Awesome,’ said Woodley. He said it simply, his voice light. ‘See you again maybe.’ He nodded at Fount, a man-to-man gesture.
‘Bye,’ Fount said to him.
‘What a prick,’ said Fraser. ‘It’s meeting pricks like that that makes me actually look forward to getting back to my desk.’
I knew that wasn’t true. However high she’d climbed, at heart she was a street cop through and through.
We were in the car. Woodley and I had pulled on our seat belts, we were ready to leave; Fraser was taking a few moments to rage. ‘I bet he wishes he was still sucking at his mammy’s breast. What do you reckon?’
‘I think we need to be careful. He’s almost too much of a cliché, he looks so good for it on paper. Young, single male, all of that. But I think we need to be careful not to make assumptions about him.’
She ignored me. ‘You know as well as I do that if there’s a cliché there’s usually a good reason for it. Christ! That little prick’s given me a headache with his skanky flat and his self-obsessed, smug little bucket and spade ideology. He needs to get out of the sandpit and get into the real world. Knights of Isthcar, what’s that about when it’s at home?’
She sighed. She looked tired. She was putting in the hours this week, just like everyone else.
‘I suppose it makes a change from asking for a lawyer. I feel like I’ve got something in my eye, have I got something in my eye?’ Fraser pulled down the mirror and pulled down an eyelid.
‘I don’t think he did it,’ I said.
She flicked the mirror back up brusquely.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I agree that he looks good for it on paper, but he couldn’t take his eyes off your legs in there, and your…’ I felt shy suddenly.
‘My what, DI Clemo?’
‘Your shoes, your red shoes.’
‘Oh right. Well, for a moment there I thought you were going to say something else.’
Woodley snorted from the back seat and then tried to turn it into a cough.
‘So what’s your point, Jim?’
‘My point is that somebody interested in children is not usually interested in women, especially not in a fetishistic way. He couldn’t take his eyes off the red shoes. I was watching him.’
‘I still want him brought into the station. We can’t possibly rule him out because he looked at my shoes. You know that as well as I do. Woodley, I saw what you did at the end there. Very smart. When we bring him in, I want you to interview him and get to the bottom of his dirty little mind whichever way it bends.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ I could hear the sound of a grin in Woodley’s voice.
‘I’m not your “ma’am”,’ she said. ‘“Boss” will do. Right, come on, Jim, what are we waiting for?’
RACHEL
Halfway through the morning Nicky announced, ‘I’ve spoken to John. He wants us to go round to his house so we can agree together on a design for a “Missing” flyer, and print some there. He’s got a laser printer.’
I’d never been to John and Katrina’s new house. Not past the front door anyway. I’d spent plenty of time standing on the gravel outside when I’d dropped Ben off for the weekend.
‘Will Katrina be there?’
‘I expect so, yes, but at this point I think you need to think of her as another pair of hands. She wants to help and we need all the help we can get.’
I thought of the blog and the comments I’d read this morning.
‘Any port in a storm?’ I said.
‘Exactly!’ she said, and she smiled just a little.
It pleased Nicky when I said that because it’s what our Aunt Esther used to say. ‘You’d been through a storm,’ she would say if we ever discussed the circumstances that had led us to live with her. ‘A terrible storm, and I was your port.’
‘A safe haven,’ Nicky would say and Esther would agree.
Esther had taken us in after our parents’ death. She was our mother’s much older sister. She brought us to her house immediately after the accident that killed our parents and we never left after that. She sheltered us from gossip, which sometimes hung around us like a cloud of biting midges. She gave us the chance to have a childhood, or her version of one.