The Guardian

by Christopher Kenworthy

  She missed.

  Carver looked up to see Lovegod watching him.

  “Kept your reactions sharp, wherever you’ve been,” he said in the deep, splintery voice which comes from cognac in excess in the small hours.

  “I exercised,” said Carver expressionlessly.

  Lovegod nodded very carefully.

  “I know you did. Hot, in Beirut,” he said.

  Carver stared at him until the policeman’s eyes flickered. Then he pushed past and went down the stairs at the back and into the basement kitchen. Betty Lovegod looked up from the stove where she was cooking what looked like the breakfast for a platoon of battle-weary Marines.

  She had been what men call a fine figure of a woman in her youth, and middle age had only added curves to her generous body.

  The titian hair was hanging round her shoulders, in heavy swags and she still had last night’s makeup on. But there was still a wicked gleam in her eye as she surveyed Carver.

  “Hello, Harry,” she said in a husky voice which might have been pure sex, but which, Carver knew, came out of a packet of Marlborough. The packet was on the top of the stove, and as Carver watched, she tugged a cigarette out and lit it from the gas flame. She had to bend to do it and as she did so, Carver could see down the front of her house coat. Under it, she was naked.

  “Hello, Betty,” he said, careful to keep his voice level. She flicked a lock at him out of the corner of her eye, and smiled into the frying pan. It was brimming with bacon, eggs and fried potato.

  “Like some breakfast?”

  He shook his head.

  “I ate a couple of hours ago. But I could drink a cup of tea.”

  She jerked her head at the corner of the draining board. There was a large, enameled teapot there with a lid which fitted but did not match. Next to it was a clutch of cups, no two of which were of the same pattern. A half empty milk bottle, its foil cap dangling on a thread, was beside them. The rest of the draining board was covered in plates which had yet to be washed.

  “Help yourself.”

  He picked up one of the cups and washed it under the tap before pouring his tea. It was piping hot and surprisingly good.

  “That’s great. No wonder the British built an Empire on this stuff,” he said, finding himself a place on a bench which was buried under clothes either on their way to or from the wash.

  “Needs body. We use a dead rat.”

  There was a glimmer of amusement in her eyes as she said it.

  For a split second, his face had changed and she had noticed.

  “Ask it not to pee in it next time,” he returned. But it was a feeble riposte. Betty guffawed and abandoned the pan for a time while she scraped three plates and ran them under the hot tap for a few seconds.

  “Eric! Tansy! Ruth!” she shouted suddenly, and a thunder of feet on the stairs warned Carver in time to move his tea. Three teenagers pushed wordlessly past him, seized brimming plates of bacon and egg, snatched eating irons from the table and disappeared upstairs again.

  “They like to eat watching telly,” explained Betty. “Rots their brains, of course, but it’s better than having them eat down here with the human beings. I used to feed the pigs on the farm, and I’d rather watch them.”

  Lovegod reappeared soundlessly on the stairs, now fully dressed in suit and tie. He carried his shoes in his hand, and sat on the bottom step to put them on.

  Betty dropped onto a pile of unironed shirts opposite Lovegod and nursed a cup of tea.

  “I was sorry about Lynn, Harry,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah,” said Carver.

  “I didn’t know she was an addict,” Betty said, watching his eyes.

  “No,” said Carver grimly. “Neither did I.”

  “And then little Irene going missing,” said Betty. “Have you had any news?”

  “Not really.” Carver finished his tea and stood up. Lovegod was shod and ready to go.

  “Thanks for the tea,” Harry told the woman. She winked at him broadly and put her hand on her hip, pushing one leg forward like a tart in a doorway.

  “Any time, Harry. Just any time at all,” she drawled and at last got a smile out of him. Betty Lovegod had never been known to stray from her marital bed in over twenty years of marriage, but she flirted outrageously. Looking at her, Carver thought, not for the first time, that Lovegod was a man lucky beyond his deserts and certainly beyond his realization. He also thought, not for the first time, that if Betty ever found out about her husband’s sex life, Lovegod would be well advised to emigrate.

  When they got to the street, Lovegod stopped and stared at the big Daihatsu jeep standing by the kerb.

  “I thought you were driving a hired Fiesta?” he said.

  “Yesterday, I was,” Carver told him. “Today I’m on my own wheels.”

  He climbed into the car and let Lovegod in through the passenger door. The car rattled into life, and Carver wound out of the narrow street and into the slow-moving traffic of London.

  “Where to first?” he said.

  “We’ll go and see Ben Johnson at the Mcwhitty,” said Lovegod. “After that, there’s a woman you might get something out of. Might even be some help to you.”

  He lit another cigarette, pitched the first, half smoked, out of the window, and fumbled for a light. Carver punched the fascia lighter for him and refused the offer of a cigarette himself.

  “I gave it up,” he said. “Okay, I did without it for a couple of years.”

  “Hard to get?” Lovegod was peering at the traffic. Apparently he was a nervous passenger, his foot dabbing continuously at a non-existent brake, his hands clutching the passenger bar.

  “Impossible. I just smoke cheroots, now.” Carver drove fast but expertly, threading the bulky diesel through the traffic like a mini oar. Lovegod closed his eyes and coughed hoarsely.

  “For Christ’s sake slow down! You’re not in Beirut now,” he said.

  A police car, siren whinnying, tore past them and Lovegod shuddered.

  “One of those suicidal bastards drove me home the other night. Worst ride of my life. Should be prosecuted,” he said, wheezing.

  Carver ignored him, swinging suddenly into a side street and parking the oar neatly between two Cortinas which looked as though they had been thrown together hurriedly from spare parts.

  When he got out of the oar, he slammed the door and stood looking round. From the entrance of a Victorian house nearby, three boys aged around thirteen looked back with eyes aged around thirty.

  Carver beckoned, and one of them came to him, swinging his shoulders. He stood looking at Carver, head on one side, eyes insolent, hands stuck in the pockets of his designer jeans.

  “See that car?” said Carver. The boy looked beyond him at the Daihatsu, with a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, and nodded. He was a good looking child, with close cropped gold hair, blue eyes and a well-cut expensive shirt tucked into his jeans. Instead of trainers, he wore light grey suede casual shoes. A tiny gold earring gleamed in his right ear.

  “That’s my car,” said Carver. “I’d like you to look after it for me.”

  This time the gleam of amusement turned to a condescending smile.

  “Oh yes?”

  Carver matched the smile with one of his own. It was not a thing of beauty and the boy’s self assurance wavered visibly.

  “Yeah. If it’s okay when I come back, you get a quid each. You and the other four.”

  The boy’s confidence was wavering badly now.

  “Four?” he said warily.

  “The two in the doorway and the two behind the Cortina,” Carver said. “But I’ll give the money to you. You can do what you like with it. I reckon you’re the main man.”

  The boy’s eyes held complete understanding. He snapped his fingers and pointed at Carver.

  “Got ya!”

  Carver nodded. “See you later, one way or the other.”

  �
�And if I’m not here?”

  “Then I shall have to assume you have fallen down on your job,” said Carver, “and I shall come and find you.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said the child, all arrogance again. “Where?”

  “At the King’s Arms,” said Carver over his shoulder. “Ask your brother whether Harry Carver ever misses out on a promise.”

  Lovegod regarded him with an inquisitive eye as they turned the corner of the street.

  “Chancing your arm, aren’t you? Who’s his brother anyway?”

  “Larry Manning,” said Carver. “I saw the kid there night before last. He’s Larry’s spit. I chased Larry half across Europe and knocked him down three times bringing him back to England and he’s never forgotten it. He’ll happily kill me himself if he gets the chance, but he won’t let anything happen to my car. It would make him look like a kid.”

  *

  Johnson was a dark, slender man with a heavy moustache, straight hair which hung over his temples and an expression which looked as though it had been squeezed out of a lemon. He shared an office with his secretary and a kettle.

  Both had seen more joyful days.

  “Yes, we heard you were back in the country,” he told Carver. He did not make it sound as though the news had improved his day.

  Outside the steamy little office, the corridors of the home rang to the sound of children’s voices. It was an old building, and though an honest attempt had been made to cheer it up with bright paint and improved lighting, nothing short of demolition could knock the air of seediness out of the walls.

  The children sounded happy enough, though, he had to admit.

  There must be more to Johnson than met the eye.

  “Yes. Your daughter was brought here, about eighteen months ago. We tried very hard to find you for a long time, Mr Carver,” Johnson said severely. He was the kind of man who would tell the time and ask a favour with the same hostility. The thought of being confined and controlled by him, even in the busy cheerfulness of the home, made Carver wince.

  “I was abroad on business,” Carver told him. “What happened?”

  “Well, as to your late wife,” Johnson began. “I have no exact information, though I gather Sergeant Lovegod can help you there.”

  Lovegod avoided Carver’s eye and teased another cigarette out of his package. The secretary looked appalled.

  “This is a smoke free zone,” she said in a voice which had been forged and tempered in Cheltenham Ladies’ College. “I would be obliged if you would not smoke!”

  “I’ll look after my lungs and you can look after yours, Miss Haycox,” he said drily. His voice sounded strained and Carver realised he was trying very hard not to cough.

  The secretary who, amazingly, was wearing white satin swept out of the room with a look of deep affront. Lovegod saw her on her way with a sweet smile.

  “We’ll talk about Lynn later,” he said. “Just tell Carver about Irene.”

  Johnson opened the thin folder on his desk.

  “She was brought here by the police on the death of her mother. Apparently she found the body when she got home from school. A nasty experience for a young girl left on her own. She called the police and ambulance and stayed with her mother, to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, until it was apparent that Mrs Carver was beyond help.

  “The doctor says she had been dead for hours. Since mid morning.”

  He looked up from the folder with a set, angry face.

  “She needed you and you weren’t there, Mr Carver,” he said coldly. “It must have been a very important business trip to take two years.”

  “It was.”

  “Well, she was sent to us on a more permanent basis under a Place of Safety order from the magistrates’ court on the third of the month, and the magistrates later confirmed the order making her our responsibility until next of kin could be traced.”

  He looked up again. “We couldn’t.”

  Carver merely nodded. “Go on.”

  Johnson went back to the folder.

  “She spent all her time here assuring us that you would be back to collect her. Checked her mail every morning. Sat near the office at break in ease the phone rang. Then, a few months ago, she vanished.”

  “A few months?” Carver pulled the folded magazine from his pocket. The date was the current month.

  “Ten months, Mr Carver.”

  Carver folded back the magazine and showed it to him.

  “Just confirm my own identification, will you? That her?”

  Johnson looked at the picture, then stared at it, like a rabbit gazing the wrong way up a shotgun.

  “How...? Yes, yes by God, it is her! When was this taken and where?”

  Carver reached over and brought it back to his own side of desk.

  “France,” he said. “Then I’m finding out when at this moment and then I’m going looking. What interests me, though, is how she got there. Any ideas?”

  Johnson was still registering shock.

  “Ideas? What about?”

  Carver leaned over the desk. Lovegod, seeing the muscles bunch behind the man’s neck, got ready to grab, but Carver’s hands stayed under the desktop, clasped between his knees.

  “How she got to France, friend.” Carver’s voice was dangerously level. “I guess you don’t lay on foreign holidays for your kids?”

  Johnson merely looked bewildered. “Holidays? Of course not. What…”

  “Then how come a kid who was supposed to be in your charge turns up outside a restaurant in goddamn Carcassonne, friend? What happened here, and how come nobody knew?”

  In the silence which followed, the sound of a child outside bouncing a ball against a wall came very clearly.

  Lovegod cleared his throat.

  “I think you had better answer the gentleman, Mr Johnson. And then I have a few questions for you myself.”

  Johnson glanced at him, and then pushed his hands through his hair. It flopped back into the same position instantly.

  “I wish I knew what had happened, Sergeant,” he said in a much deflated voice. “All I can tell you is what is in the file. I was away from the building at the time.”

  He picked up the top sheet.

  “The dormitory monitor reported on the morning of the Saturday that Irene’s bed had not been slept in. Neither she nor anybody else saw Irene leave the room during the night. Simply that she was there at Lights Out and she wasn’t at Morning Roll Call. When we had a look in her locker, her clothes were missing and so was her kit bag.

  “So she planned to go, or she was taken away by someone who knew how to take everything with her. Is there any kind of supervision at night?”

  Johnson bridled. “Yes, of course. The duty staff member would be on patrol or in the night room at all times. I have her report here.”

  Carver extended a hand.

  “Let’s see.”

  Johnson pulled back. Carver’s hand continued smoothly across the desk, caught his wrist, and squeezed. The paper fluttered down towards the desk, and Carver caught it before it had a chance to settle. Johnson sat back in his chair, massaging his wrist.

  “You assaulted me, Mr Carver! I’ll...”

  “No, Mr Johnson,” said Carver as he read the page, “I didn’t assault you. You can still walk and talk. So far. Don’t push your luck, friend. This all?”

  Johnson looked at the paper.

  “What more do you want?”

  “A goddamn sight more than this,” said Carver, passing the paper on to Lovegod. “This says that a member of staff, Miss ... No, Mrs Brownlow, spent the night in the duty room. She saw nothing unusual. She heard nothing unusual. She got up in the morning in time to wake the children. She was relieved by ... Mr Thackeray, who supervised morning roll call, and reported Irene missing.”

  “So?”

  “This paper,” said Carver passing it to Lovegod, “says zilch. Zero. Nothing.”

/>   He reached over and took the rest of the file. It was pitifully thin. Lovegod noticed that this time Johnson made no attempt to interfere.

  Carver leafed through the file. It contained Irene’s admission form, which was a thorough, if clinical, document. Carver swallowed hard when he noticed that among her personal effects listed was: “One teddy bear, brown. Red ribbon.”

  He had bought her the bear just before he left for North Africa. A little worried that it might he a bit too childish for a thirteen-year-old, a little apologetic because he would be away for her birthday.

  “Did she take the teddy bear?”

  “What?” Johnson seemed very distracted, as well he might.

  “The teddy bear. Did she take it with her?”

  “Eh? Doesn’t it say, in the report?”

  “No,” said Carver patiently. “It does not say in the report. In the report it simply says that her locker was found to have been cleared. Cleared of what? Everything she had? Kids don’t keep teddy bears in lockers, they keep them in bed. Did she take it with her?”

  “I...”

  “I think we’d better have Mrs Brownlow in here, don’t you?” asked Lovegod quietly.

  “And this other guy, Thackeray. Let’s have a word with him, huh? This stinks.”

  *

  Plainly Thackeray and the unexpected Mrs Brownlow thought so, too.

  Thackeray was a grey haired man in his fifties with a kindly face and one lens of his spectacles ground opaque. At variance with his amiable face, he seemed to be speaking under some kind of strain. His nostrils flared like a warhorse while he spoke, and he seemed constantly on the point of turning on his heel and leaving.

  Yes, he had been called by the monitor of B Dormitory before Roll Call. He had gone and inspected the bed, which had been lain on but not slept in.

  He had gone to the locker immediately, and found it empty.

  “Totally empty?”

  “Yes,” said Thackeray. “Totally.”

  “And the bed?”

  “Certainly.”

  “No teddy bear?”

  “None that I could see.”

  “Could there have been one that you could not see?”

  “Er ... no.”

  “So – no teddy bear?”

  “Well ... no.”