Off Minor (10 page)

“Oh, I don’t know. Why? Why does this all matter anyhow?”

“Near the swings?”

“Yes, I daresay he might have been near the swings. But …”

“And did you notice him being friendly with any other little girls by the swings, or …?”

“Now, look …”

“Or was it just Gloria?”

“Look, I’m not daft, I can see what you’re thinking. What you’re saying.”

“Mrs. Summers, I’m not saying …”

“Yes.”

“All I’m interested in doing …”

“Yes, I know.”

“If he took a special interest in Gloria, if she trusted him …”

“Look, I’ve told you. He was a nice boy, a nice young man. Polite. What you’re suggesting …”

“The day you left Gloria playing on the swings, Mrs. Summers, the day she went missing, you can’t remember seeing Raymond there then?”

“No.”

“You can’t remember for sure, or …?”

“No, he wasn’t there.”

“You’re certain of that?”

Edith Summers nodded.

“Quite certain, because …?”

“If he’d been there, I would have seen him. Gloria would have seen him.” She took a breath. “If Raymond’d been there none of this would have happened.”

“Why’s that, Mrs. Summers?”

“Because I should’ve left her with him, of course. Asked him to keep an eye on her, like I’d done before.”

Divine had spoken to Raymond’s boss on the phone, not a major inquiry, hardly anything at all, certainly nothing to bother mentioning to the youth himself, but if it was possible to establish …

“You’d better come down,” the manager said.

Divine parked his car on the opposite side of the road, fifty yards down. No telling what you might get splashed across your paintwork, driving in among the delivery vans, offal on electric blue not one of his favorite color combinations.

“Mr. Hathersage won’t be long,” the middle-aged secretary told him, walking him across the yard to the manager’s office, little more than a cubicle with orders spiked in three piles on a high desk, a couple of meat packers’ calendars on the wall, the one waving a fork through her legs worth a second look.

Divine eased the door back open a crack and listened to the refrigerators hum.

Hathersage was a stocky man in a smeared white coat, fiftyish, one eye swollen, its pupil floating in yellow rheum. The hand that shook Divine’s was firm and strong.

“I’d never have took him on if I hadn’t owed Terry a few favors. That’s his uncle, like. I hope I’ll not have cause to regret it.”

“You haven’t so far?”

Hathersage gave a slow shake of the head. “Youth’s willing enough, I suppose. Not the sort to go prancing out the door the minute the second hand slips into place. Not bright either, but who is nowadays, types we get in here, job like this?”

“Reliable, though?”

“Oh, aye. What’s he done?”

Divine didn’t answer. He asked the manager to tell him about Raymond’s hours of work instead.

It transpired that some of the more skilled employees worked shifts, including nights. Raymond, though, for him it was a straightforward day, eight till four or four-thirty.

“Five days a week?” Divine had asked. “Six?”

“Five and a half as a rule, sometimes Sundays on top.”

“Regular half-day?”

“Clockwork.”

“And in our boy’s case?”

“Tuesday.”

Divine wished he could remember the day Gloria had disappeared, couldn’t even get the date straight in his head. Still, easy enough to check later on. For now, Divine glanced at his watch, checked it against the clock on the wall at right angles to the manager’s desk.

“Serious, is it? This trouble youth’s in.”

Divine shook his head. “Shouldn’t think so.”

“Nothing for me to worry about, like?”

Another shake of the head.

“Petty thieving?”

“Your cash box is safe.”

The manager grunted disparagingly. “What I got in there, take it, you might say, and welcome to it.” He tapped the fingers of a stubby hand on Divine’s knee. “I’ve had sides of beef disappearing out of here like they’ve risen from the dead. Three hundred, four hundred pounds’ worth a week. In the end we took on this security firm. Night patrols. That’s when it were going missing, like. It were one of your chaps solved it. Come by here in his Panda car, short cut over the bridge; funny, he thought, loading that time of a night. Flashed his torch on a dozen and a half carcasses bedded down in the back of a Mitsubishi estate. Chuffing security bloke holding open the boot, splitting it fifty-fifty. Feller as was behind it, been here six year, courting my lass for last three of ’em. Got real shirty, she did, when I allowed as how I wasn’t coming to the wedding.”

Divine wondered idly what she’d had in her bottom drawer: couple of sets of silk underwear and half a dozen chump chops.

“You can wait for him here,” the manager said. “I’ll whistle him over.”

“It’s okay. Take the time to stretch my legs.”

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” the manager smiled, opening the office door.

“What’s that?”

“The smell. Wife swears if she’s born again she’s going to latch on to a vegetarian. Wouldn’t do no good, I tell her, fart twice as bad as anything I bring home with me. Not their fault, mind; beans and the like.”

Divine waited by the canal, leaning on the parapet watching an old man and a boy gazing at their rods, lines descending into the still flatness of water. In twenty minutes, none had moved, man, boy or lines. If that was all life had to offer, Divine thought, I’d soon jack it in now. He turned just as Raymond was rounding the corner, floodlights at the visitors’ end of the County ground rising up behind him. Divine made no other move, waiting for the youth to recognize him, hesitate, flustered, before making his way over.

“Is it me you’re waiting for?”

Raymond stood, shoulders stooped beneath the bargain leather jacket, stitching starting to give at several of the seams. Here and there, particles of pork fat, freckles of dried blood, clung to his face and hair.

“Off home,” Divine said. “Car’s over there, I’ll give you a lift.”

Raymond blinked at him, uncertain. “No, you’re all right. Sooner walk.”

Divine reached out a hand towards Raymond’s arm. “After a day’s work? You’ll not want that.”

“Yes. I do.” Divine’s fingers round his elbow. “The walk, I like it. Helps me clear my head.”

Divine let his hand fall away. “Suit yourself.”

Raymond nodded quickly, blinked and went to step round Divine, but the detective shifted his balance, blocking Raymond’s way. “We’ll sit in the car instead,” Divine said.

“So, Raymond, Ray,” Divine relaxing now, opening the nearside door so that Raymond could slide in, “how’s the job going? Pretty well?”

Raymond sniffed and leaned forward, staring through the windscreen.

“Get on all right with the boss?”

“Hathersage? Side from he shouts all the time, he’s okay.”

“And the rest?”

Raymond glanced around. What was he after, asking all this stuff. Wasn’t exactly like being on YTS. “All right, I suppose. Don’t have a lot to do with them, really. One or two of them, though, been there for years, think they know everything, you know how I mean?”

Divine nodded helpfully.

“Least there’s no blacks, one good thing.” Raymond’s fingers were seldom still, now pulling at the material of his trousers, now flexing, now tightening into a fist. “Wouldn’t be right, would it? Working, you know, with meat and that. Wholesale. Go down the butchers for a piece of steak, topside, whatever, you don’t want to think some nignog’s had his hands all over it, do you?”

Divine had to admit the youth had a point there.

“Where’d you keep it, Raymond? Somewhere at home, or d’you carry it with you all the time?”

Gobsmacked. “What?”

“The knife.”

“I don’t have no knife.”

“Raymond.”

“I haven’t got a knife.”

Divine staring at him, enjoying it now.

“What’d I want a knife for? What kind of knife, anyway? I don’t know anything about no knife.”

“Under the bed? Jacket pocket? For all I know you’ve got it with you this minute.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’s in the drawer.”

“Which drawer’s that?”

“In my room.”

“Along with the socks?”

Raymond wanted to get out of the car. He didn’t understand why the police were so interested in any knife, what that had to do with anything.

“What d’you want a knife for, Raymond? Not taking your work home, trimming away surplus fat?”

“Protection.”

“Who from?”

“Anyone.”

“Girls?”

“Course not girls. What would …?”

“Had it with you that night, though, didn’t you?” Sweat breaking out along Raymond’s forehead, starting to run down on to the bridge of his nose. “What night?”

“You know,” Divine smiling.

“No.”

“The night you were with Sara; the night you found Gloria.”

“There’s no law against it.”

“Oh, Raymond, that’s where you’re wrong. Carrying an offensive weapon, intent to cause malicious damage, get the wrong magistrate, you’re looking at time inside.”

It was hot inside the car now, hot and getting hotter: Raymond could smell the warm smell of flesh, his own and others, his own sweat. “I’m going,” hand reaching round for the door catch. “I want to go.”

“You haven’t ever used it to threaten anyone, Raymond? Force them into doing something against their will?”

Raymond pulled clumsily and the door swung outwards, releasing him on to the street. At first he thought the policeman was going to come after him, haul him back. But all he did was sit there, arms folded across the top of the steering wheel, grinning at Raymond as he backed, half-running, across the street.

All the way along London Road, cutting through past the station, scuttling along the tow-path by the canal, Raymond kept looking round, all the while expecting to see Divine suddenly there, behind him and closing. By the time he had fumbled his key into the lock, dropped down on to his bed, Raymond was shaking so badly he had to squeeze his hands hard against his sides, not moving until the shirt beneath his jacket was stiff and cold.

Fourteen

Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. The day that mattered, the day in question, proved to be Saturday and never Tuesday, no matter how many times Mark Divine took the dates of the month, the days of the week and shook them around, spilling them out across his desk hoping for bingo. It always came out the same: Saturday. Between one and one-fifteen. Divine had checked back and there was nothing that put Raymond as missing that day, not as much as a couple of hours. By the time he had checked out, the earliest, Gloria Summers had been missing for at least four hours.

That aside, what else was there?

A spotty kid, a nervous disposition and BO.

Big deal.

A youth who sweated a lot and carried a blade.

What rankled Divine was the certainty that if he went to Resnick with no more than a gut feeling, the inspector would give him short shrift. Whereas Lynn Kellogg, Patel even, they had the boss’s ear. But Divine … as far as Resnick was concerned, Millington even, he was a set of muscles with an attitude problem and not a great deal more. Get yourself sorted or you’re out: it had been implied more than once; stated outright, the time his prisoner had been found in the cells, blood all over his face.

He went berserk, sir. Those injuries; they were self-inflicted.

Asking Resnick to believe that had been a bit like persuading the Archbishop of Canterbury that Mother Teresa did a little hooking on the side.

“Ease up, Mark,” Millington had said, doubtless passing down the word from on high. “We know where your Raymond is. Minute anything else points in his direction we’ll have him so fast he’ll think he’s grown wings.”

So Divine went back to helping the rest do something about improving their crime clear-up rate, now wavering around the thirty-percent mark, despite the whining willies at the Home Office who kept announcing to the world that it was in single figures. Which is to say that he went back to wasting more than sixty percent of his time with unnecessary paper work; whoever dreamed up PACE, Divine thought, was a stationery freak whose fantasy was a fifty-foot-long form to be filled in in triplicate. And as for the bright idea of recording interviews on tape, instead of having some poor bugger with an aching wrist and a splodgy Bic trying to get down every word—great! Terrific! Saved no end of time during the interview, preserved the flow, course it did. Made it less likely some lying bastard was going to get his brief to accuse you of fitting him up, sure it did. What nobody seemed to have bothered thinking about was the amount of time it took to transcribe the things, every spluttering cough, every sodding word. Playing it through a second time, checking for mistakes. Rumor was, more civilian staff were being taken on to help cope, but rumor, Divine knew, didn’t do shit.

In the office that morning, Patel was beavering away under a pair of headphones, Lynn Kellogg was writing up a summary for court, which was where Naylor was kicking his heels, waiting to give evidence against a bloke who’d been poncing auto parts and not even sure if he’d get called. Likely as not, the sergeant was pressed up against the mirror in the Gents, clipping his mustache, and Resnick was behind his desk wrestling with an oversize ham sandwich. So who was out there, getting it done?

If he had his time over again, Divine thought, he’d use his head: take up rugby professionally, either that or a brain surgeon.

Resnick had finished his sandwich and was looking again at the final report from forensic. What had been recovered from the railway sidings had been in such a state it had taken days, not hours, to pick it through, isolating anything that had come into contact with Gloria’s body. Most of the fabric that had been painstakingly recovered from inside the plastic bin liners had been contaminated with mold and was unlikely to provide anything useful. From beneath Gloria’s fingernails, however, the path lab extracted several minute fibers of woven material, red and green. A carpet? A rug? Though nobody was placing bets, the wise odds were on the latter.