THE LOST BOY an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Mike began by asking why it had taken them until Thursday evening to telephone the police.

  Mr Radleigh rubbed the back of his neck. ‘We were up in London for a few days, as it’s the exeat. Didn’t arrive back until Thursday morning.’

  ‘Joanne — my secretary — had taken a few calls from parents who thought it might be Alain, but she had no way of telling,’ the headmaster went on. ‘And, bless her, she didn’t want to trouble us with something that might be entirely irrelevant.’

  Mike raised his eyebrows and Mr Radleigh dipped his head in apology. ‘Joanne can be a bit of a dragon when it comes to protecting our time away.’

  ‘The appeal made national news,’ Mike said. ‘Surely—’

  ‘We don’t watch much television — even when we’re here,’ Radleigh said with a disapproving frown. ‘Rather like watching the world through one’s letterbox, I always feel.’

  ‘But you did see his picture, eventually,’ Mike said, stifling his irritation at the man’s dismissive tone. ‘If not on TV, where? In the Echo?’

  Radleigh shook his head. ‘We’d cancelled the papers, as we were going away, but Joanne managed to track down a parent who’d actually had the presence of mind to tape the thing on TV. Apparently, the news programme showed Alain’s photograph, and naturally, when Joanne realized that it was he, she contacted me immediately.’ He stopped, perhaps aware that he was explaining himself more than was strictly necessary.

  ‘Milk or lemon, Sergeant?’ Mrs Radleigh asked.

  ‘Milk, thanks.’

  Mrs Radleigh bent to complete the task. She smiled as she handed over the cup.

  Must take years of training, that, Mike thought. The tea-making ritual, the gracious smile, not spilling a drop. Years of patient coaching. He tasted the tea and made an effort not to grimace. It was bitter, though it smelled faintly of flowers or some sweet herb — nothing like his normal brew — and he was almost grateful for the stronger scent of beeswax and cigars that pervaded the room, masking the strange flavour. The room was chilly, despite the heat of the day: it faced south-west, and the morning sun had not crept in through its windows. Mike was reminded of one of his mother’s pronouncements on the English: ‘Meanness or stubbornness, I don’t know which, but May to September you’ll not see a fire in an Englishman’s grate.’

  She had formed her opinions of the English gentry from her time in service in Ireland, and in all essential features, they had remained unmodified, unmoderated by the years.

  ‘You’re sure the boy is Alan Fournier?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Alain,’ Mr Radleigh corrected. ‘Like the author. His mother is French. Alain speaks the language fluently.’

  Mike sipped his tea and stole a look at Mrs Radleigh. She wore a plain linen dress with a matching short-sleeved jacket. An expensive-looking diamond brooch was pinned to one lapel. Gold earrings and a plain gold chain in matching twists gleamed against her pale skin.

  ‘What about his father?’ he asked. ‘Is he around?’

  The headmaster and his wife exchanged a look. ‘They’re divorced,’ Mr Radleigh said. ‘When Madame Fournier signed Alain up with us, she insisted on using her maiden name. We did ask for the father’s name — it helps if we’re having trouble chasing up fees to have more than one point of contact — but she left that section of the registration form blank, and we didn’t insist.’

  ‘I’d like a list of names and addresses of Alain’s classmates,’ Mike said.

  Mrs Radleigh cleared her throat. ‘We would, of course, have to ask for parental permission before divulging such details.’

  ‘Mrs Radleigh,’ Mike said, ‘we don’t know what happened to the lad, but it must have been pretty bad for him to run off in the middle of the night and end up miles away from home, unable or unwilling to speak.’

  Mrs Radleigh frowned. Her hair, an astonishing construction of body perm and hair spray, positively quivered with indignation at the contradiction. Mr Radleigh took a step forward. ‘I’m sure our parents would be eager to do all they can to help, Sergeant,’ he said, smiling. ‘I suppose you will already have one or two names from your hotline . . .’

  Mike looked up sharply. The headmaster’s pale blue eyes showed guileless interest. ‘The full list would be nice,’ Mike said.

  ‘You shall have it.’ The courteous little bow was implied, a fabrication of the mind only, but it created a powerful image of the headmaster charming parents — circulating with easy grace at a social gathering, exchanging a decorous word here, a moment or two of gentle banter there, before moving on, beguiling and entertaining as he despatched cocktails.

  ‘D’you keep pictures of the kids for the records?’

  ‘Of course!’ Radleigh slapped his forehead. ‘It never occurred to me. His is fairly recent, which should help — he’s only been with us for about eight months. You can pick it up from my secretary when I take you across for the class list.’

  ‘Has there been any unusual activity around the school in the past week or so — anyone hanging around, any break-ins?’

  The headmaster looked at his wife, his eyebrows raised slightly. She gazed back, wide eyed. ‘None at all. We do have a problem from time to time with youths from Aigburth and Garston hopping over the wall to see if there’s anything worth stealing, but we have a permanent night watchman now — ex-police dog patrol — he has two very well-trained dogs.’

  ‘Would he have said if he’d had any trouble?’

  ‘We have a debriefing every morning before school begins.’

  Mrs Radleigh glanced at her husband, and then looked demurely away as she murmured something Mike couldn’t quite catch.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Radleigh said. ‘Thank you darling. A couple of lads tried to steal some chairs from the pavilion a few nights ago, but apart from that, there’s been nothing in the past two weeks.’

  ‘What about daytime? No one loitering by the gates, no unfamiliar faces?’

  ‘We have staff at the main gate to make sure the boys arrive and leave in an orderly fashion. They would have reported anything suspicious to me at the staff briefing at break time.’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was strange when Alain didn’t turn up for school on Monday?’ Mike asked.

  ‘I should have thought it strange if he had. You see, term ended a week ago last Thursday for Harcourt, Sergeant.’

  Radleigh’s wife made a fluttering gesture with her hands, and murmured something like, ‘Do you think we ought . . . ?’

  Mr Radleigh frowned. ‘If you think it may be relevant . . .’

  ‘Oh, but I do, darling.’

  Mike broke in, impatient that the conversation was being carried on as though he had become temporarily blind and deaf. ‘It’s hard to say what’s relevant until it’s been said. Sometimes not even then.’

  ‘Quite,’ Radleigh said, bringing his hand to the back of his head again and smoothing a hair that he must have imagined had contrived to get itself out of place. His hand finished up on the back of his neck and stayed there. ‘We must allow the sergeant to judge for himself. You see, Sergeant Delaney, even if it had been term time, we should not have been unduly alarmed by Alain’s absence.’

  He paused. Mike could see that the headmaster was uncomfortable breaking a confidence in this way. ‘If you can give us something on Alain’s background it could help us trace his mother and give the people working with him a better chance of getting through to him,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I can see that it would.’ The hand came down and Radleigh took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Madame Fournier is rather prone to taking Alain out of school without permission.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What did you do about that?’

  ‘We complained, of course. It is disruptive to a boy’s education, having him out of school for two or three days at a time, but when it comes right down to it, there’s really very little we can do.’

  ‘There are laws covering unauthorized school absence, Mr Radleigh.’

  Radleigh
smiled. ‘We are not the state sector, Mr Delaney. We like to think we can be a little more flexible.’

  ‘Pays her fees on time, does she?’

  The remark was calculated to cause offence, but Radleigh took it with a smile and a nod. ‘I won’t deny that it’s a factor. Prep schools are going to the wall all over the country. Even in the more affluent areas of Merseyside there have been closures in the last few years, but I think we can safely say that we get the best from our boys, Sergeant, even with a lenient approach to occasional absences.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ Mike conceded, without irony. ‘So, why does she keep him off — Sickness? Holidays? Or what?’

  ‘Madame Fournier does a lot of business in France and Italy. She’s an interior designer, and she buys ceramics, pottery and fabrics on the continent. She will, from time to time, leave the boy in our care, but . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘Leave him in your care?’ Mike asked. ‘Is this a boarding school, then?’

  ‘We have day boys as well as boarders — forty full-time and fifteen . . .’ He turned to his wife. ‘Is it fifteen, darling?’ He turned back to Mike, having received confirmation. ‘Fifteen weekly boarders.’

  Mike formed a frivolous picture of fifteen weakly boys, cold and shivering, coughing and sniffing through whatever served as assembly here. He placed his cup and saucer on a spindle-legged table and wrote a few notes, while Mr and Mrs Radleigh waited courteously for him to finish.

  ‘We have a little extra room, a few spare beds in case of emergencies, but Madame Fournier prefers not to let Alain stay over, if she can avoid it.’ He hesitated, and Mike looked up.

  ‘Sir?’

  Radleigh glanced at his wife, but she looked away, leaving the decision to speak or remain silent to her husband. ‘Alain’s mother is, at times, a little oversolicitous of the boy.’

  ‘That’s it?’ There was a silence. ‘The lad won’t talk to us, Mr Radleigh. Won’t you speak for him?’ The appeal to the man’s sense of decency worked.

  He took a breath, hesitated, then said, ‘This is only an impression, Sergeant Delaney . . .’

  ‘Whatever you can tell me . . .’

  Radleigh paused, composing his thoughts. ‘Alain was — is — a pleasant, quiet, hard-working little chap. He doesn’t exactly light up a room when he enters it, but he’s well-liked and he has friends. He’s never a problem in school — except when his mother is around.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The fact is, he seems tense, anxious — perhaps even fearful — when his mother is present.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m being unfair . . .’ Mrs Radleigh murmured a reassurance that he was not.

  ‘One occasionally comes across a parent, usually a mother, who will explain at length that her little boy is delicate, sensitive, nervous — and yet our picture of the child is very different. Often, it’s a sort of projection of her anxieties onto the child. We did try to persuade her to let him board on a termly basis, but she wouldn’t have it.’

  ‘Said she needed him near her.’ Mrs Radleigh’s expression said she neither gave the notion much credence, nor did she sympathize with Madame Fournier.

  ‘Have you got anyone staying at the moment?’ Mike asked.

  ‘As I explained, Sergeant,’ Radleigh said patiently, ‘the summer exeat began just over a week ago.’

  ‘And none of the lads go home a bit late?’

  They both laughed. ‘We are very fond of our boys, Sergeant,’ the headmaster said, ‘but we wouldn’t allow that.’

  ‘Not even a day or two late, like Saturday morning?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Radleigh demanded, momentarily losing his good humour and impeccable manners. ‘That Alain boarded with us on Friday evening and we let him wander off and did nothing to prevent it? Worse still, that we didn’t report his disappearance to the police?’

  Mike heard a little gasp from Mrs Radleigh and she exclaimed, ‘What an extraordinary idea!’

  ‘Who looks after the boarders?’ Mike asked, determined to follow through his ‘extraordinary idea’.

  ‘Cannon Jones,’ Radleigh said.

  ‘A vicar, is he?’

  Radleigh shook his head. ‘Cannon with two Ns — it’s is his nickname.’

  ‘What’s he called Cannon for?’

  ‘I think it had something to do with a television detective in the 1970s — the name was bestowed upon him before our time. Look, is this really relevant?’

  ‘Like I said—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Radleigh interrupted. ‘It’s difficult to know.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Twelve years.’

  Long enough to know what he’s on about, Mike thought. Long enough to be given the boot if he didn’t fit in. ‘Where is Madame Fournier now?’ he asked.

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’ Radleigh sounded genuinely apologetic. ‘During the holidays, we simply don’t know what family arrangements might be.’

  Mike nodded. ‘Okay. I’d like a word with “Cannon” Jones.’

  * * *

  They called in at his secretary’s office to provide Mike with photocopies of school documentation on Alain. Mike looked over the secretary’s shoulder as she riffled through the files. ‘Can you photocopy any forms or letters for me, as well?’

  She did not answer, but looked to the headmaster for approval, passing Mike a photograph of Alain — Paul, as Mike knew him — before getting up from her desk to go to the photocopier.

  ‘It’s a good likeness,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the original, if that’s okay. We’ll take copies and let you have it back.’ He stepped outside to phone through to the incident room and gave the boy’s name and address to DI Crank.

  Radleigh showed him to Jones’s flat personally. Whether this was because he didn’t trust his secretary to keep her mouth shut or another example of the old-world courtesy that Mike found both charming and infuriating in the man, he couldn’t be sure, but he was glad of the escort. The school layout was confusing — a clutter of doorways and corridors and narrow staircases which seemed to serve single rooms and store cupboards. The headmaster fell silent. Mike sensed that he was struggling with something, wondering if he should say what was on his mind.

  ‘Whatever it is, it’s best said.’ Mike glanced at the headmaster. ‘If it helps us find out what happened to Alain . . .’

  Radleigh nodded gravely. ‘No doubt the Social Services people have already told you this, but . . . Alain—’ He stopped. ‘One notices when boys board, you see. We insist on them having a bath when they stay — even if it’s only overnight.’

  ‘You noticed the scars.’

  ‘The duty staff did, and of course they reported it to me. Some of them looked like cigarette burns.’ He shuddered. ‘He also suffers from enuresis.’

  ‘Enu—?’

  ‘Bed-wetting. Of course, he’s only eight, but it is relatively unusual in our boys. And a sign of psychological disturbance.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mike said. ‘So I’m told.’

  Cannon Jones’s rooms were in a far corner of the main building, and this, too, was a maze of corridors and cubby-holes, stairways and landings.

  ‘There is a corpus of staff who live in,’ Radleigh explained. ‘It’s essential to provide the level of cover we need to look after the boarders.’

  They were walking down a long corridor, having taken several turns after entering through the central doorway — it seemed the school building was constructed in the shape of a letter E. The gleaming wood block floors looked newly polished, and the smell of wax was sharp. Mike remembered his own school corridors as steeped in the old smells of smoked haddock and steamed pudding, its classrooms reeking of stale sweat and fresh farts. At Harcourt, it seemed all unsavoury odours were eradicated by the vigorous attentions of the cleaning staff, who were present in impressive numbers but seen only at a distance.

  As they passed, Mike glanced at the oil paintings which lined the walls of the corridor. Eac
h bore a small explanatory plaque.

  ‘Former headmasters and old boys who have made a significant contribution to society,’ Radleigh said, adding after a moment’s thought, ‘Or to the school.’ He was going through the motions of his prospective parents’ tour speech. The pauses, and the sly, self-effacing jokes were obviously well-rehearsed, and Mike guessed he could generally rely upon getting a laugh from that one. Unless the ‘prospectives’ were foreign, or below the blurred boundary of middle and working class.

  Mike jerked his chin. ‘If my old school carried pictures of past notables, they’d be mostly mug shots.’

  Radleigh made a small sound of commiseration.

  At the end of the corridor there were two broad staircases, both wooden, both freshly waxed. ‘The left staircase leads to the dorms, the right one to the staff bedrooms,’ the headmaster explained.

  They mounted the right staircase and, glancing left, Mike saw that there was a connecting door through to the dormitories.

  ‘It’s left unlocked at night,’ Radleigh told him. ‘Should a boy need access to the duty master.’

  Mr Jones’s rooms were at the end of a dark, creaking corridor, one flight of stairs up from the main staff accommodation. Radleigh knocked, and within seconds the door was flung open and a barrel-shaped man with a straight, nailbrush-stiff moustache bounced out into the corridor and ushered them in. Mike suddenly made the connection: Frank Cannon, the seventies TV detective whose trademark was obesity. Introductions completed, he led them through to a large and comfortably furnished room. It was redolent of bachelorhood: the all-pervading smell of cigars that Mike had noticed in the Radleighs’ sitting room, leather sofas and brass reading lamps and acres and acres of books. The room seemed a little fusty, in want of some fresh air, but it had the well-kept look of a place routinely swept out and polished by someone paid to do the job.

  Mr Jones was already dressed, and had apparently breakfasted, if the tantalizing smell of bacon and toast was anything to go by. It appeared that Mr Jones rated a higher specification of accommodation than the bedroom and shared bathroom that most staff were granted: there were doors either end of the main sitting room, and the breakfast smells attested to the fact that he evidently had his own kitchen.