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‘Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. It’s not really that far.’
‘Perhaps he had other people to say goodbye to?’
She pulled a face. It made her look older and even more tired. ‘More like he couldn’t stand spending any more time with his mother.’ She tried it out as a joke, but a tiny crease of pain blistered the surface.
Her emotion was palpable. I smiled sympathetically. She started to respond, and then remembered that I was a cop, that I was trained to entice people into the confessional. She shook her head, pulling herself out of it. ‘Testosterone. It turns young men into monsters.’
She moved forward and reached out to the mantelpiece behind me. For an irrational instant I felt myself thrill at the possibility of physical contact. ‘Here,’ she said, stepping back, handing me a framed photograph, ‘that’s Boon.’ I hid my disappointment as she retracted.
But I couldn’t conceal my surprise.
‘You didn’t know?’ she asked, amusement showing in her eyes.
I shook my head. Boon Paterson was a handsome, sturdy, not too tall, young black man. He was standing in khaki fatigues besides a camouflaged Land Rover, a wide smile on his face, and a radio with a long whip antenna strapped to his back.
‘His father?’ I asked, hoping that it didn’t sound too crass.
‘His father’s a shit,’ she said vehemently. But she had understood the question. ‘Boon’s adopted,’ she explained in a softer voice. ‘His birth mother was sixteen years old, and no one was volunteering as the father. She gave him his name. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? You call your child Boon, and then decide that you can’t cope with the reality of it.’ She was pensive for a moment. ‘My husband left me,’ she said, explaining the outburst.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘So was I.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Now I have to spend my nights at the Sychnant Nursing Home.’
I looked down at the photograph again. Trying to understand what it must have been like. To be black and grow up in a place like this.
She read my mind and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant, that’s it, time’s up. I’m running behind now. I’ve still got to shower, and I’ve got stuff to prepare to sustain me through another long night.’
She shook hands under the front porch. Her parting smile was warmer. I walked to the car thinking about her. We shared the same polarity. We were both outsiders, both damaged goods. By the laws of magnetism I should have been repelled. I wasn’t.
As soon as I was clear of the house, I tried calling Boon on the mobile phone number that Sally Paterson had given me.
I got an unable-to-connect message. No answering service. I tried again, with the same result. He could still have been in transit. On a plane with his phone switched off. Or, if he had returned, he could be catching up on sleep, or already on duty.
To try to go through official channels would require clearances that no one was going to give me.
On the drive home I rotated through the other information that she had supplied. Wondering what she had meant when she told me not to believe what I had heard about young women not going missing in these parts? Was Boon being black just a surprising fact? Did it have any relevance to Magda?
Why had they dropped him off in Dinas? His mother had been surprised that he had left so early. She had been hurt that he hadn’t seen fit to say goodbye to her. Even if he had been part of that group that had lurched down off the hill on Sunday morning, he would still have had plenty of time to report in at Brize Norton.
I started to develop a scenario. I put Boon back on the minibus. They have now picked up Magda, and have dumped the driver. Sod the pimp story, one of the group is driving. But that’s immaterial. They are heading towards the hills to continue the party.
With an attractive white girl on board.
And one black guy.
What if Magda was turned on by Boon? She wouldn’t know the social pecking order here. Her first impressions are of a busload of rednecks and an attractive young black kid. Where’s the choice? So is this what gets Boon booted off the bus in Dinas? And, more importantly, what does it do to the group’s perception of Magda? Does it change the dynamic? Angel to slut?
The telephone woke me in the early morning.
‘It’s Sally Paterson …’ A woman’s voice trying to contain urgency.
‘Sorry … ?’ I said groggily.
‘Boon’s mother. You gave me your number, I didn’t know who else to call.’
I straightened up, adrenalin kicking in. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve just got in from work. There’s a message on the answering machine from Brize Norton. Boon never reported in for his flight back to Cyprus. No one knows where he is.’
5
Sally Paterson opened the door before I managed to knock. She had been watching for my arrival. Her hair, which had been pinned into a loose bun, was escaping in straggling wisps, and she was still wearing the sickly pink polyester housecoat that doubled as a uniform at the Sychnant Nursing Home. I followed her through to the kitchen, her handbag gaping open on the table where she had dropped it before checking the answering machine. She had shadows of fatigue under her eyes from her night’s work, and was speedy with worry, her heels working like castors, seeking solace from motion.
‘Did you make the calls I suggested?’ I asked.
She nodded distractedly, and I guessed that she hadn’t picked up much comfort. ‘I went back to the Transport Officer at Brize Norton. No change there. Boon’s about to be officially classified as absent without leave.’
‘What about his base in Cyprus? It could be a simple case of army SNAFU.’
She shook her head. ‘He never arrived. And he’s not on the way. There were no alternative travel arrangements. He was expected on the Brize Norton flight.’
‘Did you get in touch with the taxi company?’
‘I rang the one he usually uses. They didn’t get a call to pick him up on Saturday night.’
‘We’ll ring round,’ I said soothingly. ‘They may have been too busy.’
‘They would still have known if he had called,’ she snapped. She threw her head back and screwed her eyes closed tightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed. ‘I mustn’t take this out on you.’
‘That’s okay.’ I persuaded her to sit down. She was frayed from trying to contain the arcing sparks of her anxiety. The night shift hadn’t helped. I made a pot of tea and sat down opposite her. ‘How did he get home?’ I asked.
‘Home?’ she replied, eyeing me blankly.
‘The minibus dropped him off in Dinas. That’s at least five miles away. How did he get back from there?’
She shook her head while she was thinking about it. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at me wanly. ‘Is it important?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do I do?’ she asked, trying hard not to let helplessness in.
‘The first thing you ought to do is try and get some sleep.’
She shook her head in a vague protest.
‘Is there anyone you can get to come over? Family? Any friends you would like me to contact?’
‘My mother’s in Dorchester, but I wouldn’t want to worry her.’
‘Any special friends?’
She smiled weakly. ‘You’re very tactful, Sergeant Capaldi. No. No special friends. Boyfriend. Or girlfriend.’
‘You can call me Glyn, if it helps.’
‘Glyn …’ She tasted it. Then nodded. She looked up, eyes suddenly alert now, as if she had reached a decision. ‘Do you know why he doesn’t talk to me any more?’
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ I said quietly.
‘No, I want to. I have to keep trying to understand this myself.’ She arranged the words in her head for a moment. ‘It’s because he blames me. Blames us, I should say, but his father’s not around any more to take his share. He blames us for bringing him out here. For depriving him of his culture, he tells me. His heritage. You see, now that he’s in the Army and teamed up with other Afro-Caribbean men, he’s accusing us of dragging him away from his natural background.’ She laughed self-mockingly. ‘And to think that we deliberately brought him as far away as we could from that background. To keep him safe, we thought.’
I glanced out of the window. Cold slate roofs, grazing sheep and slanting rain. About as far away from life on the Street as you could get. ‘Why Wales?’ I asked.
‘It wasn’t meant to be Wales. We just wanted to get out of the city. Boon was six months old; we wanted to be in the countryside. I thought we could try somewhere like Oxfordshire or Northamptonshire. Somewhere not too far from town. But Malcolm was offered a good job here in Mid Wales.’ She shrugged. ‘Housing was cheap, we could buy a nice place, and still be relatively well off.’
‘What kind of a job?’
‘History teacher. Head of a small department. And then he ran away.’ She smiled, punishing herself. ‘It looks like that pattern’s repeating itself.’
‘How did Boon get on?’ I asked quickly, to stop her dwelling on it. ‘Socially? As a boy growing up here?’
She looked at me, and for a moment a sparkle came back into her eyes. She had recognized the question that I had been waiting to ask. ‘This brings it round to the others, doesn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘Do you like them?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘In their own way they were kind to Boon, I suppose.’
‘In their own way?’
‘It’s not their fault, they were children, but there is a certain endemic ignorance in country people. When I say “ignorance”, I probably mean intolerance. They don’t like change. They’re not used to things being different. Somehow it’s not quite right.’
‘They gave Boon a hard time?’
‘Let’s just say that they made him aware of his difference.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m being unfair to them. They did become his friends. And they stayed that way.’
‘But … ?’ I prompted.
She smiled weakly. ‘I think that he was always made aware that that friendship was a gift. I remember one time he came home after a football match. He must have been about ten. They had been playing a team from another school who started giving him a hard time, calling him names. But what he was so pleased about was how his friends had stood up for him. “Mum,” he said to me, ever so excited, “Mum, and do you know what Gordon said back to them? Gordon said, ‘He may be a bloody Coon, but he’s our bloody Coon.’”’
Neither of us laughed.
‘He broke the bond?’ I asked. ‘He went away to join the Army?’
‘That was another difference. They all had farms or family businesses to move into.’
‘And he liked the Army?’
‘Yes. He was a bit overawed at first. A bit scared, although he wouldn’t admit it. You know, out there in the bigger world, and the regimentation, and the discipline. And then he discovered his Soul Mates, and I turned into the cruel bitch who had deprived him of the funky upbringing that they had all shared. Boys and the Hood, or whatever the hell it is.’
‘Why would he not turn up at Brize Norton?’
It was a question she had been torturing herself with. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I told you, he didn’t talk to me any more.’
‘Was there a girlfriend?’
‘If there was a current one, I hadn’t been told about her.’
‘Current?’
‘He had quite a serious affair with a Czech girl he met in Germany when he was stationed there. Then he was posted to Cyprus. As far as I know, he hasn’t had a long-term relationship since then.’
She tried to smile to cover her distress, but her hands came up to her face, and she gave in to her tears. ‘I just hope something awful hasn’t happened to him,’ she wailed.
I went round to her and put my hands on her shoulders. It had been a long time since I had tried to comfort a woman. I felt awkward and unpractised. I kept my hands light and unthreatening, and felt her muscles relax slightly. The touch began to feel both intimate and sanctioned.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t worry. Let me put the word out, so that we can at least discount the worst of your fears.’
She reached a hand up to lightly cover mine. It was damp from her tears. ‘Thank you.’
She walked me to the front door. I hesitated to ask, given the state she was in, but I had to keep the momentum going for Magda’s sake. I turned to her on the threshold. ‘You mentioned, when we first met, that I shouldn’t believe them when they said that young women didn’t disappear around here.’
It took her by surprise. She nodded hesitantly. Then she surprised me by smiling. ‘How about a girl going on for eighteen who leaves for school one morning and is never seen again?’
I took my notebook out. ‘Can you give me details?’
She put two restraining fingers on the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being selfish at your expense. There is no mystery. I told you that my husband left me?’
I nodded, watching her.
‘He went out that morning too. They left together. Him and the schoolgirl.’
Okay, I could sympathize with Sally Paterson. The anxiety that her missing son was causing her, coupled with the other kicks in the teeth that life had dealt. But I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t experiencing a lift of professional elation over the gift that had just been handed to me. Now I had legitimate questions to ask the group about the disappearance of their buddy Boon.
Bryn Jones didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.
‘It’s an Army matter,’ he stated drily, when I called him in Carmarthen. ‘Let them clean up their own mess.’ In that terse sentence I realized that Bryn and the military shared a history.
‘It could be germane, sir.’
‘There is nothing for it to be germane to, Glyn. And don’t even think about mentioning a missing woman.’
‘The people on the minibus were the last people to see him, sir.’
‘The last people that we know of,’ he corrected me.
‘Don’t we have a duty to his mother, sir? To try and get close to what was on his mind that last night. In case it has some sort of bearing on why he didn’t turn up for his flight to Cyprus.’
‘What’s she like?’
