by Penny Kline
The phone started ringing. I picked it up expecting it to be Michael held up at the office, or Howard Fry with a couple more questions he had forgotten to ask.
‘Yes?’
There was no reply but neither did the caller ring off.
‘Hallo … Who is that?’
Still no response.
I held my breath, listening for any sounds that might tell me where the call was coming from. Passing traffic, the siren that warned motorists the Swing Bridge was about to open.
‘Luke? Is that you? Just tell me where you are and I’ll come and fetch you. Luke?’
Nothing. A short pause, then the dull purr of the dialling tone.
11
Michael was knocking on the door. I went to let him in. It was the first time I had seen him without a suit and he looked different, less the high-powered businessman. He was wearing rust-coloured trousers and a dark red shirt. He looked tired, preoccupied, then he smiled and walked past me into the flat.
‘Ready?’
‘Where are we going?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose we should start with a tour of the Clifton area.’
‘He’s hardly likely to be walking up Whiteladies Road.’
‘You don’t know Luke.’ He broke off. ‘Of course in a way you probably know him better than any of us.’
We stared at each other for a moment, then he turned and walked back out of the flat, calling over his shoulder. ‘Got everything you need?’
‘What did you have in mind?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, nothing in particular, only I’m not sure how long this is going to take.’
He ran down the steps ahead of me and waited on the pavement.
‘I parked a bit further up,’ he said. ‘We’ll go in mine, shall we, that way you’ll be free to scan the highways and byways.’
‘Yes, all right, but shouldn’t we be going on foot? We won’t see much from a car.’
Crossing the road to get a better view of the floating harbour he shaded his eyes against the hazy sun, then called to me to join him.
‘See those boats? I used to have one like that. They race pretty well if the wind’s right. You sail, I expect.’
I shook my head. ‘I tried it once, nearly got knocked out by the boom or whatever it’s called.’
He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Look, we both know this search is pretty much a lost cause, but at least it makes us feel we’re doing something. You can’t sit in that flat all day, blaming yourself for what’s happened.’
‘I’m not blaming myself.’
‘Good.’
I stopped to shake some grit out of my shoe.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I thought you knew places where Luke might be hiding out.’ He sighed. ‘Long shots, but I suppose anything’s worth a try.’
We crossed the road, and turned the corner, passing a house that was being re-roofed. There was always building work going on in Cliftonwood. Renovations, one person moving out, another keen to get started on the home improvements. Scaffolding stuck out across most of the pavement. Michael stood back to let me go first, then caught up again and started talking animatedly.
‘What would you be doing if this was a normal weekend?’
‘Me? Oh, shopping, cleaning the flat.’
‘All weekend?’ Did he want to know if I had someone who spent most of the weekend with me? ‘Doesn’t sound much fun.’
‘I enjoy the rest.’
‘Of course.’
His car was a white Honda CRX. The new model.
‘Good for business,’ he said, holding open the passenger door. ‘You know what they say? Nothing succeeds like success.’
We drove up Clifton Down Road, turning left along Princess Victoria Street, then weaving our way between parked cars and pedestrians, making for Sion Hill and the Suspension Bridge.
‘Leigh Woods?’ said Michael.
I shook my head. ‘I doubt if he’d be there and even if he was we’d never find him.’
I thought about Aaron sniffing his way through the undergrowth, wagging his tail non-stop, hoping to find something exciting. A rabbit, a half-eaten burger bun, something far worse.
‘We’ll go up College Road, shall we,’ I said.
‘Whatever you think best. You know this part of Bristol better than I do. I suppose Luke does too. Since he’s never learned to drive, or even bought himself a bike, he must be used to walking long distances.’
We passed Clifton College playing fields, then turned right into Guthrie Road and slowed down near the entrance to the zoo. A coachload of children was waiting by the turnstile, chattering and squealing, each with a brightly coloured backpack. A youth leader finished counting them, then started all over again.
‘Up Pembroke Road,’ I said, ‘then across the Downs and back through Westbury Park. That’s where Paula lived.’
‘You think he might have gone to her flat?’
‘She only had a room.’
‘We could ask the other tenants. It’s possible they might have seen him.’
‘I don’t know the address,’ I said, wishing I had asked Howard Fry a few questions myself.
The whole morning had an air of unreality. The police station. Doug. This pointless tour of Clifton.
‘I know,’ said Michael, ‘what about his old lodgings? I realize he won’t be there now but at the very least they might know Paula’s address.’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’
He glanced at me. ‘Why not? He might have been to see them, wanted them to explain why they wouldn’t have him back.’
‘Doug would have told me if he had. In any case, you know Luke, he never confronts anyone if he can possibly avoid it.’
The mist that had made the day seem dull and overcast was starting to clear. Michael turned on the radio, then switched it off again as a DJ started gabbling the names of the last three recordings. The inside of his car was immaculate.
‘I had a phone call this morning,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Whoever it was he didn’t speak, just hung on for a moment or two, then rang off.’
‘He?’
‘Or she. I’ve no idea.’
‘Probably a wrong number. Oh, you’re thinking it could’ve been Luke. Maybe he just wanted to hear your voice.’
He drew in to the side of the road, pulled up behind an ice-cream van and switched off the engine. ‘Feel like a walk? We’ll have a look round, then decide what to do next.’ He turned to face me. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
He said nothing. Just waited for me to decide if I was going to tell him about it. We had left the car and he was walking fast across the Downs. I had to run a few paces to catch up with him.
‘Doug Hargreaves came to see me this morning,’ I said. ‘Luke’s old landlord.’
‘And?’
‘Apparently Luke’s been helping him to develop his photographs.’ I paused. ‘In a shed at the end of the garden. I’m not sure exactly what happened but … ’
‘Go on.’ He sounded intrigued.
‘To put it in a nutshell, as Doug would say, he found the close proximity something of a temptation.’
‘Doug did.’ He sighed. ‘Poor old Luke. Women old enough to be his mother, men hanging about in bus shelters.’
‘It’s happened before?’
‘Oh, I imagine so, don’t you?’ For the first time he sounded depressed, as though he believed his brother was doomed to make a mess of his life.
‘I blame myself,’ I said. ‘It was my idea he should go and live with Doug and Elaine.’
‘It was hardly something you could’ve foreseen. Anyway, Luke’s a big boy now. A swift departure from the darkroom should’ve done the trick.’
We reached a clump of trees. Michael bent down to re-tie his shoe lace. ‘Good up here on the Downs. D’you come here often?’
‘Quite often. Sometimes first thing in the
morning. It’s deserted then apart from a few people walking their dogs.’
‘You like dogs?’
I expected him to make the usual remark about dog shit spoiling the environment. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘don’t you?’
‘Of course. All animals. I have a cat — a Burmese brown.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t look so surprised. Cats don’t mind being left on their own all day. You should get one.’
‘What’s he called?’
‘She. Her name’s Sasha.’ He kicked at a heap of sticks and dead leaves, revealing several empty beer bottles and the remains of an old shopping bag on wheels.
I shivered a little, catching hold of a branch to steady myself. Once, walking on the Downs with a friend, we had spotted a crumpled blood-stained sleeping bag pushed under some bushes and convinced ourselves it contained a body. Approaching it nervously I had flicked over a corner of it with my foot, then jumped back for fear of what might emerge. It had turned out to be stuffed with newspaper and the ‘blood stains’ were just damp patches.
‘Now what?’ said Michael. ‘Something else you haven’t told me about?’
‘No.’ I started walking across the grass. ‘If we walk in a circle, well, more of a rectangle, we can cover most of the open space.’
Half an hour later we arrived back by Michael’s car.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘where now? Luke’s old lodgings are out. Paula’s room — we could waste ages and still draw a blank. If you can stand it I’d like to go to Keynsham. I don’t imagine for one moment Luke’ll be there but I want to introduce you to someone who might have a few ideas.’
I hesitated. How long was the trip going to take?
‘This woman,’ he said, ‘she’s a friend of the family, not a blood relation, but as good as.’
‘A sort of honorary aunt.’
‘Something like that. She used to live in the village. When we were kids she’d baby-sit, that kind of thing.’
‘If you think it’ll help,’ I said doubtfully.
I was glad to be back in the car. The walk across the Downs had been aimless, whereas driving provided a sense of purpose. Moving from A to B, on the way to somewhere important. Part of me was wishing I had stayed in the flat. If the phone call had been from Luke he could ring again and next time he might pluck up courage to speak. On the other hand I couldn’t think of anything worse than a day waiting for a phone call that never materialized and, besides, whereas Howard Fry had made me irritable, uneasy, Michael was making me feel a little better.
We were approaching the city centre, queuing up to join the roundabout.
‘Her name’s Faith,’ said Michael. ‘Faith Gordon. She lives alone, values her independence, plus the fact she’s got a fairly low opinion of men.’
‘She might be out.’
‘Unlikely. I don’t want to phone or she’ll start making elaborate arrangements, dusting the furniture.’
The digital clock on the Evening Post building said twelve thirty-three. We were going to reach Keynsham in less than half an hour and that would mean Faith Gordon might feel obliged to offer us something to eat.
‘What about lunch?’ I said.
‘You’re hungry?’
‘No, but if we’re going to reach your friend around one o’clock — ’
‘We’ll tell her we’ve eaten already.’ He signalled to change into the left-hand lane. ‘She won’t try and force-feed us, she’s not that kind of person. You’ll like her. She’s very down-to-earth, hates cant, anything pretentious.’
‘I doubt if she likes psychologists.’
‘Why ever not?’ He glanced at me and smiled, negotiating the next lane-change with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the edge of the passenger seat.
I looked away. He noticed and a slight current passed between us. We both knew what it meant.
*
Faith Gordon lived in a flat in a small purpose-built block. Each flat had a balcony and most of the balconies held pots of geraniums in varying shades of orange and red. I had expected the flats to be full of old people with a warden employed to make sure nobody had been taken ill or fallen and broken a hip.
I was wrong. A youngish women was sitting on the grass in a deck-chair reading a newspaper, and a few yards away a girl of seven or eight was threading daisies together to make a chain. It broke and I saw her turn to the woman and mouth an obscenity. The woman slapped her leg and the child let out a high-pitched shriek. Michael pointed to a window at the corner of the building.
‘That’s Faith’s flat. The ones on the first floor only have one bedroom. Some of the others have two or three. It’s quite likely she won’t know anything about the accident or Luke’s time in hospital, never mind the latest development.’
‘Won’t your parents have told her?’
He shook his head, pushing open a door that led to the flats with uneven numbers from one to twenty-three. I followed him up the stone steps and we waited outside flat eleven until someone came to answer the bell.
Through the ribbed glass I could see a figure approaching. She appeared to be dressed all in white but when she opened the door I saw that only her top half was white. Her skirt was a great swirling mass of yellows and reds. It came almost to the ground and looked as though she had worn it each summer for the past twenty or thirty years, taking it out at the beginning of June and putting it back in mothballs at the end of September.
‘Michael.’ She held out both hands. ‘What a surprise.’
He kissed her lightly on the cheek, then turned towards me and made the introductions.
She looked me up and down, then smiled to herself as though she had observed something no one else had noticed. ‘Come along in, both of you. I’ve never met a psychologist before but I’ve heard you’re all the rage.’
The rooms of the flat led off one corridor and all the doors on the right-hand side were closed. On the left was a tiny kitchen, then we entered a fairly large living-room with two windows overlooking a stretch of lawn, and beyond the grass another block of flats.
We were commanded to sit down.
‘Have you eaten? Of course you haven’t.’
‘We had a snack,’ said Michael. ‘No, really, neither of us is very hungry. Look, I’d better tell you straight away, we’re here about Luke.’
She drew in a sharp breath, then covered it up with a laugh. ‘Well, I didn’t think it was a social call.’
Not surprisingly she had assumed Michael and I knew each other well. Sitting back in a large shabby armchair she hitched up her skirt, crossed one freckled leg over the other and waited with her eyes half closed. She was a large woman but big-boned rather than fat. Her hair was white, cut short, with a thick straight fringe. From the rest of her colouring I guessed that it had once been red. There were freckles on her arms too and the back of her hands.
‘Anna’s been helping Luke the last couple of months,’ said Michael. ‘You know how nervous he is, lacking in confidence.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Her tone was matter of fact, as though Luke’s treatment came as no surprise.
‘Anyway,’ said Michael, ‘last Saturday, a week ago today, there was a road accident.’
‘Not Luke.’ In an instant she was sitting up straight, bracing herself for a shock.
‘No, not Luke,’ I said hastily. ‘A friend of his called Paula Redfern.’
The name meant nothing to her. Why should it?
‘What kind of an accident? Was it fatal? Oh dear, oh dear, I sometimes wonder how any of us survive into old age.’ Michael moved his chair closer to her. ‘It was nobody’s fault, just one of those tragic … Anyway, Luke took it very badly and Anna decided he’d be better off in hospital.’
‘Hospital? Oh, one of those places. And that’s where he is now?’
‘No.’ Michael glanced at me, acknowledging that clearly she knew nothing of Luke’s whereabouts. ‘He came out of hospital on Wednesday and Anna took him back to her flat in Cliftonwood.’
‘
That was good of you, but don’t your superiors frown on that kind of thing?’
He laughed. ‘Anna’s not bothered what her superiors think. Luke talked to her, trusted her. You know how wary he’s always been. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the following day he disappeared.’
‘Into thin air? You mean he’s gone off to lick his wounds.’ She stood up, walked across to a revolving bookcase, then returned and handed me a silver-framed photograph.
‘It’s the only one I’ve got. Taken about twelve years ago. How old would you all have been, Michael?’
He shrugged.
‘Oh, come on, you must have been just fourteen and that would make Luke nine and Diana six.’
I studied the stiff studio portrait. Neither Michael nor Luke had changed very much. All three of them were sitting down so it was difficult to judge how tall they were but the two boys looked more or less the same height. The girl was much smaller. She had beautiful eyes with long thick lashes and her fair hair was tied back in a pony tail.
‘Michael wondered if you might have any idea where Luke could have gone,’ I said, still studying the photo. ‘He’s not with his parents and we’re not sure where to look.’
The two of them exchanged glances. Then Faith moved towards the window and stood with her hand resting on the sill.
‘Can’t help, I’m afraid. Doesn’t he have friends in Bristol who’d put him up for a night or two?’
‘None that we know of,’ said Michael. ‘He was in lodgings up near the Downs but Anna’s certain he hasn’t been back there.’
She didn’t enquire about the lodgings.
‘Poor Luke, I haven’t seen him for well over a year and then it was quite by chance — in the Galleries at the shopping centre.’
Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? I thought you couldn’t stand Bristol, always shopped in Bath.’
‘I felt like a change. Regretted it, of course, the parking was well nigh impossible and they overcharged me, I know they did.’ She coughed. ‘What about Oxford? I know he wasn’t there long but he must have met people at his college. He might have kept in touch.’
Michael looked doubtful. ‘What d’you think, Anna?’
