by Nina Milton
“He’s the worst.” Caroline shuddered. “He follows me right up to my garage, screaming questions at me every time I go out.”
She settled the coffee pot onto her trolley and walked purposefully across to her window. She didn’t cower behind the curtains today. She stood full centre and shook a fist at the solitary newshound who lingered by the gate.
“Look,” said Nora, holding up one of my brown glass bottles. “Sabbie has given me this!” There was the vestige of a Devonshire accent in Nora’s voice.
“I had one of those, they’re lovely. Use it in your bath.”
“Well, I’m very grateful.” Nora Rodderick recrossed her ankles. She’d been doing this every half minute or so. I wondered if the slight change in position was a substitute release valve, letting off an invisible charge of pressure from within. She seemed immensely calm to me, but perhaps that’s how people under strain behaved within range of Caroline’s influence. Or perhaps it was something to do with being in the Women’s Institute—a remnant of the wartime spirit that kept up the home morale. One simply didn’t show one’s feelings, even if one was melting with tears.
“We pray daily for him,” she said. “The whole village. The school playground is a riot of colour—bouquets on every railing. I believe that keeping him in our thoughts will keep him alive until he’s found.”
She opened the handbag on her lap and delved in. I assumed she was searching for a tissue to keep the tears at bay. What she brought out made me blink. It was a laughing Buddha, carved from wood and painted in glowing colours, maroon and gold and indigo, then lacquered to a high gloss. It fitted snugly in her hand.
“Aidan had this in his satchel when …” She hesitated, then smiled. “Funny, how they’ve gone back to satchels, isn’t it? Some of the children have a sort of big zipped-up pencil case for their pictures and things, but Aidan has a satchel. He’s so proud of it.”
She was struggling to keep her grandson in the present tense, willing him to still be alive.
I was staring at the Buddha in horror. With the experience of the Slamblaster fresh in my mind, I never wanted to work with an inanimate figurine again. “It’s … it’s not really a toy, is it?” I faltered.
“He has a thing over this,” said Nora. “Stella brought it back for me from her student travelling days. She did visit a lot of interesting places, before she had Aidan. Anyway, it used to grace the dressing table in my spare room, the one we made into a nursery. He was eighteen months at the most when Stella found a job. Well, she didn’t want to be a drain on me, and I encouraged her independence. But little Aidan cried for his mummy something dreadful.” She placed the Buddha in the centre of the coffee table, where it chuckled at us in silent, macabre mirth. “He took a shine to this, started carrying it everywhere, called it Buddy. I remembered what Stella told me when she brought it back from Thailand, and I turned it into a story. If you rubbed his fat tummy, he’d send you good luck. We used to rub Buddy’s tum each morning as Stella went out the door and wish she’d come back safely. Of course, she always did.”
Nora retrieved a lace-hemmed hanky from her cardigan sleeve as tears welled up and overflowed from eyes as red as wounds. With the amount of crying she must have done lately, I was surprised she hadn’t gone over to man-sized tissues, but old habits die hard.
Without speaking, Caroline passed round fine china plates, each with a tiny pastry cup filled with custard, soft fruit, and whipped cream. These must have taken hours to make, and I reckoned I could dispose of mine in less than a minute.
“Try to eat,” she told Nora. “To keep up your strength.”
“Oh, you’re right, of course. Stella needs me.” She picked up the fruit cup and took a valiant bite. “And Aidie’ll be back, you’ll see, tumbling over the furniture and upsetting the flower vases!” She put the pastry down, as if the tiny morsel she’d taken was going to last her some time. “Did Liz bake these? I recognise her light touch.”
“An institute member,” Caroline explained, turning to me. “They’re being so kind to us both, aren’t they, Nora?”
Nora nodded. “Stews, bakes … they sent me over the winning floral arrangement yesterday.”
“You’ve been friends a long time?” I was touched by the camaraderie of the two women, the victim’s granny and the accused man’s mother.
“Oh yes, years,” said Nora. She looked at Caroline, who’d perched herself on one end of the three-seater, now that we had been fed and watered. “And we’ve all known Cliff since he was wee. No one round here believes he did it. No one.”
There was a tremor in her voice. I thought of my own determination to clear Cliff’s name. None of us knew he was innocent. It was all gut feeling. As Rey had said, it was proof that counted. Proof or a confession. I cleared my throat.
“I can’t promise that I’m going to be any help at all, Nora.” I wanted her to be let down now, before her hopes were raised too high.
“Caroline’s told me how you’ve been supporting Cliff. And she said you had a hand in finding that awful place out on the moors.”
“Yes. That surprised me as much as anyone else.” It was the truth. As the days went on, I was beginning to believe I might have dreamed it all, and Rey’s scepticism encouraged this process.
“I understand that you can’t contact Aidan,” Nora was saying. “Well, of course you can’t, but I wondered if … because his Buddy was something he loved … oh God, he’ll be distraught without it!”
I didn’t speak. I could think of nothing to say that would soothe this woman’s pain. She blew her nose with her bit of lace, and continued. “I’d just like you to try. I’ll quite understand if … ”
There was a long pause in the room. I thought about the body of Josh in its shallow grave, and how his Slamblaster toy hadn’t been placed there with him. And when I finally took the Buddha in my hands, a sensation flashed through me. The images weren’t visual, but the symbols that came into my mind made me feel uneasy. I lowered Aidan’s precious Buddha gently into my lap. I didn’t want to drop it, not even onto the deep pile of Caroline’s silk rug.
“What happened on that afternoon,” I began. “To the satchel, I mean. Did he have it with him?”
“He took it to school. But when he disappeared, it was in the classroom.”
So the Buddha had been nowhere near Aidan’s captor. Strange, then, that it shot such despondency into me. Or was its psychotic grin disturbing my balance?
“So different nowadays, though,” said Nora, dipping into her handbag again. I held my breath, concerned what would emerge from it this time. An envelope; inside it a photo. “In my day we had to sit behind our desks for the school photo. Two children at a time, sitting behind a double desk, and then they cut the picture down the middle so it was only you. But now, well, look at this.”
Aidan was at the very top of a climbing frame, his legs dangling through the bars, his face mischievous as a pixie. He was brim full of the climb, his socks half down, his shoes a bit scuffed, his hair all messed.
I looked up at Nora. “He’s wonderful,” I said.
“I know. That is him—captured perfectly. He has a thing about that playground equipment. It was made for him. In fact, he’s a bit of a problem at school. Not ‘settled,’ the teachers say. If he’s missing from class, they know where to find him.”
“Out on the climbing frame?”
“He’s been told off and warned off I don’t know how many times.”
I looked back at the photo. It felt as if Aidan winked—was winking—at me. Always up to monkey business. A little monkey.
“We warned him against strangers,” she said, her voice rising. “Stella was insistent. I think he must have been offered chocolate, he’s a sucker for that.”
I passed the photo back. “This must be so difficult to bear.”
Nora nodded, taking shaky breaths of t
he floral-scented air. “They wouldn’t have heard his screams,” she said. “It’s what I’ve been thinking since the beginning. It’s only one class, for all the five- and six-year-olds, you see. The juniors don’t even have the same playground access. And they’d have been clearing up from painting. I help in the class from time to time; I know how loud things can get. All those little darlings, having fun.” She tried to turn a sob into a chuckle. “I can’t sleep for thinking about it. But that makes me feel better. My suffering isn’t a hundredth of Aidan’s.”
Caroline got up and went to sit next to Nora, her arm around her friend’s shoulders for long minutes, while sobs wretched out of her. I mostly looked at the Buddha, who seemed to be telling me I was a callous fiend to put Nora through these questions.
Even before I picked the Buddha up, I’d guessed he’d been nowhere near the abduction site. Tucked safely at the bottom of the satchel hanging on a school peg, he wouldn’t hold any of the terror of that moment. So why did he impart such an aching sadness?
After a while, Nora spoke into her palmed hands, which were shiny with tears and saliva. “I needed a proper cry,” she said. She was the sort of woman who would be embarrassed about showing her feelings before strangers, but I think she already had begun to consider me as a friend. “I’ve been holding things in a long time.”
“It’ll do you a world of good,” said Caroline.
“Nora,” I began, “there’s something in the Buddha. Was Aidan going through a difficult time before he—You mentioned he hadn’t settled at school, for instance?”
“He can be a bit wild, but he loves his class. Runs in through the door of a morning. Of course, it’s just as well, because Stella needs to go to work in the day. She’s a one-parent family, you see.”
I recalled the TV appearances, Stella’s frightened, tear-struck face, alongside the grim visage of Garth Stanford.
“Doesn’t Aidan see his father?”
“He has him for the odd weekend, yes.”
“Does Aidan like Garth?”
“He seems to. I’ve taken him to visit myself and I can’t deny that he fair raced away from the car when I dropped him off.”
“The police have interviewed him,” Caroline broke in.
Nora nodded. “He was one of the first, I think. But they let him go.” She looked directly across at me. “Stella had this dreadful relationship with Garth when she was at university. I could tell that he was … how can I put it? He isn’t the man I’d wish as the father to my grandson. He’s not stupid—he got his degree—but he’s done nothing with it. Nothing with his life. A waster is what I’d call him. Far too selfish to want to snatch his son and have to tow him around with him.”
“The police don’t seem to be thinking along the lines of a simple battle of parents,” I agreed.
“We don’t know that for sure, though.” There was a slight quaver in Caroline’s voice. “We don’t actually know anything about Garth, do we?”
“Caroline, love,” said Nora. “Garth is a waster, no doubt of that, but he’s never been cruel to Aidan.”
I remembered what Rey had said yesterday. These people … they hide all their evil and go walking around the world as if nothing is amiss. I could see how Caroline might clutch at the straw of Garth, a seemingly far more likely suspect than her own son. Rey’s words might fit either of them equally. Even so, I went over all the details Nora had given me so far.
“No one heard Aidan scream. What if he didn’t cry out at all? If he’d seen someone he knew and trusted at the edge of the playground, he might not even have thought about returning for his satchel.”
“I’m sure Garth wouldn’t hurt him,” said Nora, an obstinate look on her face.
It struck me that although Nora had taken a strong dislike to her daughter’s college romance, she was going to defend the father of her grandson, as people tend to do when their family is threatened. She’d made up her mind that evil had come down upon them from outside.
“You’d know,” said Caroline, turning to me.
I was pulled from my thoughts. “Pardon?”
“You’d know if it was Garth or not. Soon as you looked at him. I’m sure of it.” She got up and loaded the tea trolley. “This has all gone cold. Shall I make some fresh?” She trundled out, shutting the door behind her. I imagined her standing over the kettle to weep.
I looked across at Nora, wondering how she would react to Caroline’s outburst. “That’s not how it works. I’m no better at gauging character than the next person. I have to have access to someone’s spirit world to know anything more.”
Nora struggled up from the feather-depths of the sofa. She came across to me slowly, as if the floor was strew with hazards. She contemplated Aidan’s Buddha for a moment before lifting it from my lap as if it were Aidan himself.
“Anything,” she whispered. She kissed its merry cheek. “Anything that will find my darling. Any tiny thing.” Her eyes had a halo of tears. “I’d like you to meet Garth. Please. For me.”
TWENTY-ONE
Garth Stanford lived like a traveller, except his multihued van was not going to travel anywhere. Some time in its history, it had lost its wheels. It was half out of sight from where I was standing—on the other side of a five-barred gate—but I could certainly see that it was balanced on breeze blocks. I hung around the gate as if I was on a stakeout and dived into my bag for my mobile.
“Caroline?” I hissed into the phone. “I’ve found it.”
“Clever you!” came from the other end. “Nora said it was hard to find.”
I glanced back at the van. “Once seen, never forgotten, I should think.”
“Now, you take care.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You must ring us again as soon as you’re out of there.”
“If he lets me in at all.” I’d been hoping we might give Garth a ring, to ask him if he was available, but Garth did not have a telephone, and now I could see why.
“If you haven’t rung in half an hour, I’ll ring you. If I don’t get a reply, I’m alerting the police.”
I blanched. “Don’t do that, Caroline! I’m not exactly popular with the police at the moment.”
“Keep in contact, then.”
“You have to give me some time. Promise you won’t ring me until later.”
But I didn’t trust her not to call, and I didn’t want it to sound as if we’d set this up between us, so I put my phone on silent mode. This cloak and dagger stuff wasn’t at all appropriate. I just needed to get to the bottom of the dismal feeling that had come off the Buddha.
Getting into the field was going to be my first challenge. The track leading from the gate had been used by farm vehicles and was deep in mud. I clung to the fence, sliding from one patent leather boot to the other until I finally reached a bit of field that came up to trade description level. Grass, in other words. Feeling as conspicuous as a pheasant in season, I squelched in a straightish line, skirting the fire pit dug in the grass, surrounded by odd-shaped, heat-blackened stones. Soon I was close enough to make out that the splash of colour by the back door was a pot of spring primroses.
The van was tucked up against the far hedge between a couple of massive sweet chestnuts whose branches overhung its roof. Originally, the van had been an unpromising off-white colour, but its paintwork had been re-created with spray cans to depict a glorious, bright green, fire-breathing dragon. The windows were hung with bits of net curtain, which meant that the closer I came, the more easily the occupier could spot me, whereas I couldn’t even tell if he was in.
I took a razor breath and rapped on the back door. From a distance, I heard a creak of metal against metal.
“Yeah?”
I put my head round the side of the van. Garth Stanford stepped out of his driver’s door, jumping the short distance to land squarely. He was a tall man,
as lean and berry-skinned as my beloved Bren, and with even more beard, if that was possible. His hair was a wild, unbrushed corona of bronze and on his nose was the oldest pair of spectacles I’d seen in a long time. Even Arnie had better glasses than these. They were a huge, black, horn-rimmed affair, held together with bits of duct tape.
Garth was dressed in a single garment, an ankle-length kaftan of faded orange. He wore no shoes and I would’ve placed a bet that he wore nothing underneath the kaftan, either.
“Can I help you?” His voice had the deep, slow warmth of bamboo chimes.
I put my hand on the side of his van, in a sort of honouring gesture, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say that wasn’t incriminating. It occurred to me that if I did nothing more than shake his hand, I might get what I’d come for. I busied forward, arm outstretched.
“I’m Sabbie Dare.”
He stared at the hand in the way the cows in the next field might have stared at the fence, but he didn’t move.
“Let me start by saying I’m not the police or the press.” I had a strong feeling that everyone connected to Aidan would be fed up with both these agencies by now. “Or the council,” I added, searching round for other possible irritants in Garth’s life. “Or the farmer.”
The eyes behind the glasses trapped me in their gaze. “Don’t tell me who you aren’t.”
I let my hand drop to my side. I was doing badly. “Nora Rodderick told me how to find you.”
“How is she?”
The response caught me off guard. “Oh, well, desperate, I suppose.”
“I gave up on desperate some time ago.”
I studied the mud that coated my boots. “I’m so sorry.”
“What does Nora want?”
I looked through the lenses of his glasses, right into his eyes. They were a clear, honey-edged brown, guileless and filled with sorrow. “It’s about Aidan.” My voice was all whispery.
“In that case,” said Garth, “you’re welcome to come in.”
