by John Harvey
Trouble In Mind
John Harvey
Jack Kiley, a professional footballer turned private investigator, is hired to track down a solider who has gone missing while on leave from Iraq. The soldier's mind is disturbed by what he has seen and done in the war, and he is armed. There are fears both for the man himself and for the safety of his estranged wife and two young children.
Kiley's search leads him to Nottingham, where he teams up with D. I. Charlie Resnick. Together they search the house where the soldier's wife and children have been living and find them gone, almost certainly taken against their will… the only question now is, will they find them before it is too late?
Trouble in Mind brings together two of John Harvey’s major characters.
John Harvey
Trouble In Mind
Riley smoothed the page across his desk and read it again: A survey conducted by Littlewood Pools had concluded that of all ninety-two Premiership and Football League soccer teams, the one most likely to cause its supporters severe stress was Notts County. Notts County! Sitting snug, the last time Kiley had looked, near the midpoint of the League Two table and in immediate danger neither of relegation nor the nail-biting possibilities of promotion via the play-offs. Whereas Charlton Athletic, in whose colours Kiley had turned out towards the end of his short and less than illustrious career, were just one place from the bottom of the Premiership, with only four wins out of a possible twenty-two. Not only that, despite having sacked two successive managers before Christmas, this Saturday just past they had been bundled out of the FA Cup by Nottingham Forest, who had comprehensively stuffed them at the City ground, two-nil.
Stress? Stress didn’t even begin to come close.
Kiley looked at the clock.
12:09.
Too late for morning coffee, too early for lunch. From his office window he could see the traffic edging in both directions, a pair of red 134 buses nuzzling up to one another as they prepared to run the gauntlet of Kentish Town Road on their way west towards the city centre, the slow progress of a council recycling lorry holding up those drivers who were heading-God help them-for the Archway roundabout and thence all points north.
His in-tray held a bill from the local processing lab, a begging letter from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and a polite reminder from HM Revenue & Customs that the final deadline for filing his tax return was the thirty-first of January-for more details about charges and penalties, see the enclosed leaflet SA352.
His pending file, had he possessed such a thing, would have held details of a course in advanced DNA analysis he’d half-considered after a severe overdose of CSI; a letter, hand-written, from a Muswell Hill housewife-a rare, but not extinct breed-wanting to know what Kiley would charge to find out if her husband was slipping around with his office junior-as if-and a second letter, crisply typed on headed notepaper, offering employment in a prestigious security firm run by two former colleagues from the Met. Attractive in its way, but Kiley couldn’t see himself happily touching his peaked cap to every 4x4 driver checking out of a private estate in Totteridge and Whetstone on the way to collect Julian and Liberty from private school or indulge in a little gentle shopping at Brent Cross.
Early or not, he thought he’d go to lunch.
The Cook Shop was on the corner of Fortess Road and Raveley Street, a godsend to someone like Kiley who appreciated good, strong coffee or a tasty soup-and-sandwich combo, and which, apart from term-time mornings, when it tended to be hysterical with young mums from the local primary school, was pretty well guaranteed to be restful and uncrowded-the owner’s abiding penchant for Virgin FM Radio aside.
“The usual?” Andrew said, turning towards the coffee machine as Kiley entered.
“Soup, I think,” Kiley said.
Eyebrow raised, Andrew glanced towards the clock. “Suit yourself.”
Today it was mushroom and potato, helped along with a few chunks of pale rye bread. Someone had left a newspaper behind and Kiley leafed through it as he ate. Former Labour Education Minister takes her child out of the state system because his needs will be better served elsewhere. Greater transparency urged in NHS. Unseasonably warm weather along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Famous celebrity Kiley had barely heard of walks out of Big Brother house in high dudgeon.
An item on the news page caught his eye, down near the bottom of page six. Roadside Bomb Kills British Soldier on Basra Patrol… The death of the soldier, whose name was not immediately released, brings the number of British military fatalities in Iraq, since the invasion of 2003, to 130.
Iraq, Afghanistan -maybe some day soon, Iran.
Kiley pushed the paper aside, used his last piece of bread to wipe around the inside of the bowl, slipped some coins onto the counter, and walked out into the street. Not sunbathing weather exactly, but mild for the time of year. The few greyish clouds moving slowly across the sky didn’t seem to threaten rain. When he got back to his office, Jennie was sitting on the stairs; he didn’t recognise her straight off, and when he did he couldn’t immediately recall her name.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Really?” A smile crinkled the skin around her grey-green eyes and he knew her then.
“Jennie,” he said. “Jennie Calder.”
Her hair, grown back to shoulder-length, was the same reddish shade as before.
Jennie’s smile broadened. “You do remember.”
The last time Kiley had seen her she had been standing, newly crop-haired, cigarette in hand, outside a massage parlour on Crouch End Hill, ready to go to work. Two years back, give or take.
“How’s your little girl?”
“ Alice? Not so little.”
“I suppose not.”
“She’s at school. Nursery.”
Kiley nodded. Alice had been clinging to her mother, screaming, wide-eyed, when he had last seen her, watching as Kiley set about the two men who’d been sent by Jennie’s former partner to terror-ise them, mother and daughter both. Armed with a length of two-by-four and a sense of righteous indignation, he had struck hard first and left the questions for later. Some men, he’d learned, you could best reason with when they were on their knees.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“Yellow pages.” Jennie grinned. “Let my fingers do the walking.”
She was what, Kiley wondered, early thirties? No more. Careful makeup, more careful than before; slimmer, too: black trousers with a flare and a grey-and-white top beneath a long burgundy cardigan, left unfastened.
“You’d best come in.”
The main room of the second-floor flat served as living room and office both: a wooden desk rescued from a skip pushed into service by the window; a swivel chair, secondhand, bought cheap from the office suppliers on Brecknock Road; a metal shelf unit and filing cabinet he’d ferried over from his previous quarters in Belsize Park. For comfort, there was an easy chair that had long since shaped itself around him. A few books, directories; computer, fax, and answer phone. A Bose radio/CD player with an eclectic selection of music alongside: Ronnie Lane, Martha Redbone, Mose Allison, Cannonball Adderley, the new Bob Dylan, old Rolling Stones.
One door led into a small kitchen, another into a shower room and lavatory and, beyond that, a bedroom which took, just, a fourfoot bed, a chest of drawers, and a metal rail from which he hung his clothes.
Home, of a kind.
“You haven’t been here long,” Jennie said.
“Observation, or have you been asking around?”
Jennie smiled. “I spoke to the bloke in the charity shop downstairs.”
“A couple of months,” Kiley said. “The rent in the other place…” He shrugge
d. “Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee? I think there’s some juice.”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
“This isn’t a social call.”
“Not exactly.”
Kiley sat on one corner of his desk and waved Jennie towards the easy chair. “Fire away.”
A heavy lorry went past outside, heading for the Great North Road, and the windows shook. The Great North Road, Kiley thought, when had he last heard someone call it that? Seven years in the Met, four in uniform, the remainder in plain clothes; two years of professional soccer and the rest spent scuffling a living as some kind of private investigator. All the while living here or hereabouts. The Great North Road -maybe it was time he took it himself. He’d been in that part of London for too long.
“This woman,” Jennie said, “Mary. Mary Anderson. Lives near me. The flats, you know. She used to look after Alice before she started nursery. Just mornings. Alice loved her. Still does. Calls her Gran. She’s got this son, Terry. In the army. Queen’s Royal something-or-other, I think it is.”
“Lancers,” Kiley offered.
“That’s it. Queen’s Royal Lancers. They were out in Iraq. Till-what?-a month ago, something like that. End of last week, he should have gone back.”
“ Iraq?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I think so. But not, you know, straight off.”
“Report to the barracks first.”
Jennie nodded. “Yes.”
“And that’s what he didn’t do?”
She nodded again.
“AWOL.”
Jennie blinked.
“Absent without leave.”
“Yes.”
“Does she know where he is? His mum.”
“All this last week he was staying with her, her flat. Thursday morning, that’s when he was due to go back. All his kit there ready in the hall, wearing the uniform she’d ironed for him the night before. He just didn’t go. Stood there, not saying anything. Ages, Mary said. Hours. Then he went back into the spare room, where he’d been sleeping and just sat there, staring at the wall. Mary, she had to go out later, mid morning, not long, just to the shops. When she got back, he’d gone.”
“She’s no idea where?”
“No. There was no note, nothing. First, of course, she thought he’d changed his mind. Gone back after all. Then she saw all his stuff, his bag and that, all dumped down beside the bed. ‘Cept his uniform. He’d kept his uniform. And his gun.”
Kiley looked at her sharply.
“Mary had seen it, this rifle. Seen him cleaning it. She searched through everything but it wasn’t there. He must have took it with him.”
“She’s phoned the barracks to make sure…”
“They phoned her. When he didn’t show. They’d got her number, next of kin. She did her best to put them off, told them he’d been taken ill. Promised to get back in touch.” Jennie shook her head. “She’s worried sick.”
“He’s what? Twenty? Twenty-one?”
Jennie shook her head. “No, that’s it. He’s not some kid. Thirty-five if he’s a day. Sergeant, too. The army, it’s a career for him. Mary says it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.”
“All the more reason to think he’ll turn up eventually. Come to his senses.”
Jennie was twisting a silver ring round and round on her little finger. “She said, Mary, before this happened, he’d been acting strange.”
“In what way?”
“You’d best ask her.”
“Look, I didn’t say…”
“Just talk to her…”
“What for?”
“Jack…”
“What?”
“Talk to her, come on. What’s the harm?”
Kiley sighed and eased his chair back from the desk. The man in the charity shop below was sorting through his collection of vinyl. The strains of some group Kiley vaguely remembered from his childhood filtered up through the board. The Easybeats? The Honeycombs? He could see why people would want to get rid of the stuff, but not why anyone would want to buy it again-not even for charity.
Jennie was still looking at him.
“How did you get here?” Kiley asked. “Drive?”
“Walked. Suicide Bridge.”
Kiley reached for the phone. “Let’s not tempt fate twice. I’ll get a cab.”
***
When the council named the roads on the estate after streets in New Orleans they couldn’t have known about Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath. Nonetheless, following Jennie through the dog shit and debris and up onto the concrete walkway, Kiley heard inside his head not the booming hip-hop bass or the occasional metallic shrill of electro-funk that filtered here and there through the open windows, but Dylan’s parched voice singing “The Levee’s Gonna Break.”
Mary Anderson’s flat was in the same block as Jennie’s but two storeys higher, coping missing at irregular intervals from the balcony, the adjacent property boarded up. A rubber mat outside the front door read Welcome, the area immediately around swept and cleaned that morning, possibly scrubbed. A small vase of plastic flowers was visible through the kitchen window.
Mary Anderson herself was no more than five-three or -four and slightly built, her neat grey hair and flowered apron making her look older than she probably was.
“This is Jack Kiley,” Jennie said. “The man I spoke to you about, remember? He’s going to help find Terry.”
Kiley shot her a look which she ignored.
“Of course,” Mary said. “Come in.” She held out her hand. “Jennie, you know where to go, love. I’ll just pop the kettle on.” Despite the cheeriness in her voice, there were tears ready at the corners of her eyes.
They sat in the lavender living room, cups of tea none of them really wanted in their hands, doing their best not to stare at the pictures of Terry Anderson that lined the walls. Terry in the park somewhere, three or four, pointing at the camera with a plastic gun; a school photograph in faded colour, tie askew; Terry and his dad on a shingle beach with bat and ball; a young teenager in cadet uniform, smart on parade. Others, older, head up and shoulders back, a different uniform, recognisable still as the little lad with the plastic gun. Bang, bang, you’re dead.
On the mantelpiece, in a silver frame, was a carefully posed shot of Terry on his wedding day-in uniform again and with a tallish brunette in white hanging on his arm, her eyes bright and hopeful, confetti in her hair. Arranged at either side were pictures of two young children, boy and girl, Terry’s own children presumably, Mary’s grandchildren.
Jennie’s cup rattled against its saucer, the small noise loud in the otherwise silent room.
“You’ve heard nothing from him?” Kiley said.
“Nothing.”
“Not since Thursday?”
“Not a thing.”
“And you’ve no idea…?”
She was already shaking her head.
“His family…” Kiley began, a nod towards the photographs.
“They separated, split up, eighteen months ago. Just after young Keiron’s fifth birthday. That’s him there. And Billie. I always thought it a funny name for a girl, not quite right, but she insisted…”
“Could he have gone there? To see them?”
“Him and Rebecca, they’ve scarce spoken. Not since it happened.”
“Even so…”
“He’s not allowed. Not allowed. It makes my blood boil. His own children and the only time he gets to see them it’s an hour in some poky little room with Social Services outside the bloody door.” Her voice wobbled and Kiley thought she was going to break down and surrender to tears, but she rallied and her fingers tightened into fists, clenched in her lap.
“You’ve been in touch all the same?” Kiley said. “With Rebecca, is it? To be certain.”
“I have not.”
“But…”
“Terry’d not have gone there. Not to her. A clean break, that’s what she said. Better for the children. Easier all roun
d.” She sniffed. “Better for the children. Cutting them off from their own father. It’s not natural.”
She looked at him sternly, as if defying him to say she was wrong.
“How about the children?” Kiley asked. “Do you get to see them at all?”
“Just once since she moved away. This Christmas past. They were staying with her parents, Hertfordshire somewhere. Her parents, that’s different. That’s all right.” Anger made her voice tremble. “‘We can’t stop long,’ she said, Rebecca, almost before I could close the door. And then she sat there where you are now, going on and on about how her parents were helping her with the rent on a new house and how they were all making a fresh start and she’d be going back to college now that she’d arranged day care. And the children sitting on the floor all the time, too scared to speak, poor lambs. Threatened with the Lord knows what, I dare say, if they weren’t on their best behaviour. Little Billie, she came up to me just as they were going, and whispered, ‘I love you, Gran,’ and I hugged her and said, ‘I love you, too. Both of you.’ And then she hustled them out the door.”
Kiley reached his cup from the floor. “Terry, he knows where her parents live? Hertfordshire, you said.”
“I suppose he might.”
“You don’t think Rebecca and the children might still be there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“All the same, if you had an address…”
“I should have it somewhere.”
“Later will do.”
“No trouble, I’ll get it now.”
“Let me,” Jennie said.
With a small sigh, Mary pushed herself up from the chair. “I’m not an invalid yet, you know.”
She came back with a small diary, a number of addresses pencilled into the back in a shaky hand. “There, that’s them. Harpenden.”
Kiley nodded. “And this,” he said, pointing, “that’s where Rebecca lives now?”
A brief nod. West Bridgford, Nottingham. He doubted if Rebecca had joined the ranks of disheartened County supporters, all the same.
