THE LOST BOY an unputdownable psychological thriller full of breathtaking twists

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘No . . .’ Mike began carefully. ‘We’ve just the one victim.’

  Jenny stopped tugging at her hair. ‘Oh my God . . .’ she whispered, guessing what he was about to tell her.

  ‘Apparently they look alike. There’s only a year’s difference in age. The cleaning woman thought — and the injuries made it difficult . . .’

  Jenny visualized the big policeman’s helpless shrug.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Her sister, Jeanne-Louise. We think.’

  ‘Jesus wept! I thought the police checked these things.’

  ‘We do — which is why we contacted her parents in the first place. And like I say, we haven’t had the identity confirmed yet, so . . .’

  ‘Where’s the mother?’

  ‘Alive and well, in France. She’s over there on a business trip. Asked the sister to look after the boy. She called us.’

  Angeline Fournier had got through to him at five a.m., after threatening the duty sergeant who advised her to call back during office hours with an exclusive interview on breakfast TV, reviewing the incompetence of the British police. Rather than disturb DI Crank’s sleep, Madame Fournier was put through to Sergeant Delaney.

  ‘Are you the stupid son-of-a-bitch who put the fear of God into my parents, telling them I was dead?’ Her English, though heavily accented, was perfect.

  ‘Madam,’ he said.

  ‘Shut up and listen. My father has a heart condition and your half-brained message was passed on to him by telephone for God’s sake!’

  ‘Madam Fournier,’ he tried again, pronouncing her title the English way, ‘I’m sorry your parents were upset, but we had no other point of contact.’

  Mike’s wife turned in her sleep and mumbled something incomprehensible. He reached out automatically and stroked her back.

  ‘Point of contact? What the hell are you on about? If my parents hadn’t thought to telephone me, they would have been on their way to England by now to break the news to my son. Why didn’t you speak to my sister? Jeanne-Louise—’ She stopped and an awful, gaping void of silence opened between them.

  ‘We had a positive ID,’ Mike explained. ‘From your cleaning woman. Of course, we needed it confirmed by next of kin.’

  The silence stretched a little longer, and Mike wondered if she had understood. Then, in a small voice, she said, ‘Please, not Jeanne-Louise. Not my sister—’ She broke off again, and Mike had to wait a few minutes.

  ‘How?’ she said at last.

  ‘We don’t know for sure yet if it is your sister,’ Mike said gently.

  ‘Who else?’ she demanded, miserably. ‘Who else if not Jeanne-Louise? I should not have left her.’ She swore softly. ‘My God — Alain?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Mike said quickly. ‘Physically, he’s fine. But he’s refusing to talk.’

  Angeline Fournier moaned, ‘Mother of God! Did he witness it? Was he there when she was—when it happened?’

  ‘We don’t know. He was found some miles from home a week ago last Friday night. He won’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘How . . .’ Angeline repeated, tremulously. ‘How was my sister killed?’

  ‘We think it was a burglary,’ Mike said, not wanting to go into the other possibilities. ‘We have three suspects in custody now.’

  She was adamant. ‘Tell me how. I want to know how.’

  * * *

  ‘What will happen now?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘The French police are satisfied she is Mrs Fournier,’ Mike said, ‘but we’ll have to check her out over here as well. She’s flying to Manchester with her parents this morning. We’ll send someone to meet them. Mrs Fournier will be allowed to see the lad, under supervision.’ He heard Jenny catch her breath and added, ‘Alain won’t be released to her custody until we’re sure he’s safe with her.’

  ‘And the suspects?’

  ‘One has been charged with criminal damage and assault and battery — unconnected with the murder as far as we know. But he had Miss Fournier’s credit cards on him and an expensive new pool cue — as well as the receipt from the shop he bought it from — he’d only got it yesterday. In fact, only a few hours before he used it to panel beat the bonnet of a student’s car.’

  ‘D’you think he’s the killer?’

  Mike shrugged. He wished he knew for sure. ‘We picked his girlfriend up from their flat. Looks like they’ve been out and bought up the entire stock of Argos. She’s pretty well pissed off with him, so we might get something out of her . . .’ He shrugged. ‘After Mrs Fournier’s call last night, I don’t know what to think. The lad hasn’t said anything that might help?’

  ‘He did say he doesn’t want to see his grandparents.’

  ‘See what I mean? Everything’s arse-about in this case.’ There was the briefest of pauses as Mike wondered if he had offended Jenny. ‘D’you think you’ll be able to get what happened out of him?’

  ‘Eventually, but you can’t rush these things,’ she said. ‘He’s obsessed with locking himself in. He checks the doors and windows himself before he’ll go to bed. He keeps painting bars on the windows of the houses he draws, and I can’t be sure if he’s painting what it was like at home or what he wants it to be like, so that he feels safe.’ She recalled the stranger in the car, the satanic cast the match flame gave to the driver’s face, and she asked, ‘Mike, do you have anyone watching the house?’

  ‘Your house? No. Why?’

  ‘Insomniac paranoia, probably.’

  ‘Your funny phone caller?’

  ‘All I saw was someone lighting a cigarette in a car. I’m just jumpy with lack of sleep.’

  ‘Paranoia or not, if you see him — or her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘Never mind. The same car — or another — anything suspicious, get the registration and phone me, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Jenny said, blushing slightly that he had assumed — correctly — that she hadn’t thought to take the car’s licence plate number.

  ‘I’ll keep you up to date with our records search,’ Mike said.

  ‘Thanks.’ Jenny wanted the call to end. She wasn’t sure she should have mentioned the car parked outside the house, and she was embarrassed by her nervy reaction to it.

  ‘Have you had any more calls?’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘What about Fraser?’

  ‘What about him?’ Jenny wasn’t sure if Mike knew about the incident in the railway station car park.

  ‘Has he had any calls?’

  ‘I wish I knew, Mike,’ Jenny said with more honesty than she would have liked.

  ‘I’ll maybe have a chat with him, later. And Jen,’ Mike added, ‘Don’t worry about the TWOC — others can worry about that.’

  Jenny smiled as she replaced the receiver. She had known Mike for eight years — longer — since he had been involved in liaising with Social Services even before they had started fostering. He was friendly with the social workers and the paediatricians, the foster carers and the ed. psychs. Mike moved easily between the different groups, comfortable at each level, approachable and warm. He always knew how much information to give and how much to withhold. He was the kind of man who could be trusted, who invited confidences, but who never pushed his advantage. As her smile faded and the worries of the night once more intruded on her thoughts, she wondered how much Mike Delaney was withholding from her now, of what he knew about Fraser and the incident at the car park, of the man they had arrested, and of the death of Jeanne-Louise Fournier.

  Chapter 25

  Mummy coming home? Alain’s heart hammered in his chest. What will she say? He had promised and—

  A thin, high-pitched sound, like the squeal of a kettle on a hob — or a woman’s terrified scream—

  ‘She asked if you were all right,’ Jenny said.

  And Jeanne-Louise, Alain thought. Did she ask about her?

  Hands up. A flash of inescapable steel. Hacking. With contact, a few beads, red, in a
fine arc. Like the spray from my water pistol, he thinks. Splat! You’re dead! She’s dead.

  And now, he wishes he were dead. Or if not dead, for that is too terrible a word for a small boy, then invisible, non-existent.

  ‘I explained that you were upset.’ Jenny’s hand went to her temple, fingering the scratches on her face, then on and upwards through her hair. ‘Perhaps, now Mummy’s coming home, you’ll talk to her . . .’

  Alain hears the swish and chop of the blade. He sees a shuddering fall of petals as the axe swings at the tree, splitting, tearing. As the blade is pulled from the wedge he hears the sinewy squeak of metal on wood; sap bleeds onto the head of the axe. But that was before. Not — not what happened to Aunt Lou. Confused, he tries to reason it out in his mind, so that he can think what to say, what excuse to give. But there is no explanation. No excuse. What excuse could there be? He made a promise. He broke it.

  He looks up at Jenny and the soft, saintly glow of light through her hair almost draws him into telling her.

  I should have done what I said. I promised.

  ‘No!’ Alain jumped from the sofa and ran to the door. ‘Ce n’est pas de ma faute!’

  * * *

  Lobo picked at the scabs that were forming on his knuckles where he’d hit the arresting officer. His lips were drawn back into a rictus — part pain, part fury at being locked up.

  The duty sergeant dropped the flap of his cell door and Lobo stared at him. Jack Nicholson. He had a picture of Jacko in his head, how he looked in The Shining, that bit where he’s grinning like a skull, swinging the axe.

  ‘Daddy’s home!’ he yelled, then laughed. His voice was hoarse because he’d hurt his throat screaming at the bizzies, and later he’d burned the raw lining of his gullet by throwing up most of the lager he’d got down his neck. He hated that. It was criminal waste of good beer. This struck him as funny — the criminal bit, given where he was, and what he was sure to be accused of sooner or later — and he laughed even louder, but stopped when it felt like the skin inside his throat was being ripped to shreds.

  Is that stupid bitch keeping her beak shut? Lobo’s thought processes, still a little groggy from the after-effects of the alcohol, slowed a little further.

  Bitch and beak didn’t, like, go together, did they? Why do they say shut your beak? It would’ve made more sense if he went, ‘Is that stupid bird keeping her beak shut?’ But, I mean, no one calls girls birds anymore. Tart, fluff, bint, bimbo, old lady, bitch — and worse — but not bird. It almost made him blush to think of it, calling Lee-Anne something antwacky like bird.

  Lobo, as a rule, was not the thoughtful type, but he’d been going over his shitty situation all night. He was hacked off with Lee-Anne, and in a vague, unresolved way, he blamed her for his arrest. Her, and Randy and his new-found, poncey friends. He was also developing a deep and abiding hatred for the dickhead who kept coming round every five minutes to check if he’d choked on his own puke.

  How was he supposed to get a bit of rest with a beady-eyed pig sticking his snout through the observation flap every time he got his head down and started to drift off? Just getting a few zeds in and clump clump, as he comes down the corridor, click creak, as he flips the catch and opens the hatch, peers in with his little piggy eyes and then creak click, clump clump — the whole friggin’ thing in reverse.

  * * *

  Lee-Anne was fuming. I’ll kick his bleedin’ head in when I see him, she thought. She had been locked in that filthy, cockroach-infested basement for two hours before someone had rescued her. Lobo’s idea of a joke! And after that, the bizzies had come, just like she told the stupid get they would.

  Mostly, Lee-Anne could handle Lobo, his temper and his moods and his need to vary the monotony of their penny-pinching poverty, to add contours to the featureless flatness of their days with his thrill-seeking.

  She sighed, and looked around her cell: cream walls, bottle-glass windows. Nothing to look at. Yeah, Lobo was easy to read, perhaps not so easy to control, but controllable, nevertheless. Except when Randy was around. Lobo always went that bit further with Randy to egg him on — showing off to the Man. It didn’t occur to her that the notion to go cruising Mossley Hill had been all hers, nor that Lobo hadn’t even seen Randy for nearly a year. All she could think was that they’d got the flat how she’d always wanted it — cosy and smelling of new linen and warm plastic — instead of old sweat and dust. These were smells she hadn’t been able to get rid of no matter how much she cleaned, because it was ground into the carpets and had seeped into the nap of the velveteen on the settee. Now, when she opened the flat door, she got a whiff of carpet fibres and recent decoration. But the police would take it away, and it was all down to Lobo meeting Randy and having a few more jars than he could handle.

  She should be at home, in bed, with the fresh smell of starch and filler and fibre in her nostrils, the slightly scratchy feel of the new bedcovers on her skin, and Lobo standing there in his new pyjama bottoms with that foolish, lopsided grin on his face that made her want to ruffle his hair, because all he usually wore to bed was a pair of ratty old boxer shorts and a hopeful look.

  Thinking about him with that soppy look on his gob was more or less guaranteed to raise a smile, even give her a warm kind of tickle inside, but today, locked in a cell with just a steel sink and toilet in one corner, and having to lie on a bed that any old drunk or druggy could’ve lain, spat, spewed or shat on, Lee-Anne would like to have scratched Lobo’s goggly eyes out and feed them to him with HP sauce.

  * * *

  ‘Mr Khan.’ Mike Delaney said it as a form of greeting, and as confirmation of identity. He introduced himself and invited Dileep ‘Randy’ Khan to sit.

  Mr Khan stood at the table, his fingers lightly pressing the back of the chair. He seemed to consider a moment, and when he sat down it was with stately dignity. He lifted the chair out — a fleeting spasm ridged his forehead — then he placed the chair just far enough away from the table so that he could be seated. He leaned with both hands on the tabletop, and using the table for support, he folded himself into the chair and stared solemnly at Mike.

  ‘Are you ready to give a statement?’

  Khan’s hands rested on the table. He had a strip of white tape across the bridge of his nose and pads of something up both nostrils. His eyes, deep set even without the added shadow of bruising, looked positively sinister.

  ‘Am I being charged?’ he answered, and Mike had the immediate impression that Khan was familiar with police interview rooms.

  Mike tried to penetrate the depths of shadow, but Khan, frowning magisterially, was difficult to fathom. ‘You were involved in a nasty assault, Mr Khan,’ he said, avoiding a direct answer.

  ‘I was only involved because I tried to help a friend,’ Randy said. His voice was nasal and breathy. He was breathing through his mouth in shallow, catching snatches, Mike guessed to save his bruised ribs. ‘You can ask Lobo.’

  ‘Lobo?’ Delaney said.

  Khan looked him over. ‘Lobo’s well known ’round here,’ he said.

  Mike stared into the witness’s battered face. He had felt Khan’s scrutiny and didn’t want to give away more than was unavoidable. Khan was right. ‘Lobo’, aka Derek Spencer, was well known — not so much around the city centre and docks — but police in the Lodge Lane and Princes Park area were well up on his past exploits and present affluence. Lobo had been flashing the cash over last week. Mike had told the constable who’d given him the intel exactly where he thought the money had come from, and after a short silence the constable said, ‘Not his usual style. Lobo either robs houses or he gets into drunken rucks, but up to now he’s never mixed the two.’

  ‘He might be well known in your circles, but he’s not exactly public enemy number one in our book,’ Mike said, at last.

  He detected relief in Khan’s demeanour and decided to tip him off-balance again.

  ‘But I keep coming back to the fact that Lobo is dressed up in new gear, and
when he was arrested he had what was left of a very expensive pool cue in his mitts.’

  Tense again, Khan gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘Said he’d dropped lucky.’

  ‘Did he say how?’

  Khan sucked his teeth. ‘Not to me.’

  ‘We’ve had a statement from a Peter Merembe. He says you were trying to protect him from Derek Spencer — Lobo — when you were struck by the pool cue.’

  ‘There you go,’ Khan folded his arms and instantly winced in pain.

  Mike opened a bottle of water and poured some into a paper cup, placing it in front of Khan.

  ‘Mr Merembe says he was racially abused by Lobo in the pub — in front of you and friends — before the attack in the street. Are you okay with that?’

  Khan pushed the water cup aside and stared fixedly at the tabletop.

  Delaney rubbed his chin. Implacable was the word that came to mind. The heavy overhang of forehead and eyebrows, the natural gravitas this lad possessed at the age of what — nineteen? Twenty? Like a great, immovable rock. How he managed to be so persuasively dignified even with dressings up his nose and a broad white strip of tape across his face, Mike didn’t know. Maybe it was all that acting training.

  ‘Are you refusing to make a statement?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Do you really need one?’

  ‘Not to convict him of assault.’ They had taken statements from two witnesses the previous night, before they’d had a chance to get cold feet. What Mike wanted from Dileep Khan was some background on Lobo — what he’d been doing during the last week, and more particularly the previous Friday night.

  ‘Does this guy scare you, Mr Khan? Are you afraid to make a statement? If so—’

  He seemed offended. ‘Lobo’s a mate,’ he said.

  ‘So, this is you not wanting to grass up a mate?’

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘He cracks you in the face with a pool cue—’