Lifting the Lid(7)

Trevor snapped his head round to see where the sound of rattling china had come from.

‘Now what are you doing?’ he said. ‘Get down off there before you break something.’

Milly stayed where she was, glanced briefly in his direction and then resumed her examination of the tea- and coffee-making facilities.

Trevor swung his feet over the side of the bed. ‘I thought I told you to—’ But he had completed only two of the three or four strides that lay between him and Milly when he spotted the object of the dog’s attentions.



* * *



An hour or so later, Trevor sat on the toilet of the tiny en suite bathroom contemplating one of life’s many little mysteries, as he was often wont to do at such times. On this occasion, he was attempting to resolve his newly formed hypothesis that hunger could be at least partially alleviated by the retention of bodily solids. The two small packets of biscuits (three custard creams in one and three shortbreads in the other, less half a custard cream and half a shortbread grudgingly given to Milly as a reward for her discovery) had, if anything, made him feel even hungrier.

His particular concern was that he might lose what meagre benefit he had derived from the biscuits if he had a dump, and his philosophical musings had almost convinced him to pull up his jeans and abandon the operation altogether when he remembered an article he’d once read. As far as he could recall, it had said that food takes several hours to pass through the digestive system, and that being so, the custard creams and shortbreads would not yet be anywhere near the disembarkation area. If he walked away now and then suddenly became desperate in the middle of the night, he might lose everything. On the other hand, if he did it now, the biscuits would still be safe until he was within sight of breakfast the following morning.

Smiling to himself at having satisfactorily resolved yet another of life’s conundrums, he coiled one down.

Mission accomplished and respectably dressed once again, his hand reached towards the chrome-plated flush handle. Trevor had believed his adventure had begun as soon as he had released the clutch and set off in his camper van, but in fact the adventure only began in earnest the moment he started to exert a downward pressure on the flush handle. It was like pulling a lever to let down the drawbridge to a whole new way of life.

Trevor, however, was totally oblivious to the momentousness of the occasion, particularly as, when he pushed the handle, nothing happened. There was no familiar sound of water cascading into the toilet bowl, just a dull mechanical clunk from somewhere inside the cistern.





CHAPTER SIX



Detective Sergeant Logan peered into the large, ornate mirror above the fireplace and plucked a single grey hair from his temple.

‘And you’ve no idea where he is now,’ he said.

‘Who?’ The old woman addressed herself to the window and the empty street outside as she had done for most of the time since they’d arrived nearly an hour ago.

Detective Constable Swann shifted her position on the battered, bottle-green settee, her pen poised above the small notebook on her knee in case something might be said that was worth recording.

‘Your son?’ Logan said, and Swann caught the sag of the head and the closing of the eyes in his reflection.

‘What about him?’

The detective spun round. ‘Oh for—’

‘I think what DS Logan is wanting to confirm,’ said Swann, pre-empting his outburst, ‘is that you don’t know where your son went after he left here at lunchtime.’

‘Trevor, you mean?’

‘That’s right. Trevor.’

‘No thought for me. No thought for his invalid old mother, oh no. His brother wouldn’t have gone. God rest his soul.’

‘The thing is, Mrs er…’ Logan appeared to have recovered his composure but gestured to Swann for a prompt. She mouthed the name as clearly as she could, and he ran with it.

‘Er… yes. The thing is, Mrs Dawkins—’

‘Hawkins,’ snapped the old woman. ‘Mrs Haw-kins.’

‘Sorry, yes. – Mrs Hawkins, if there’s anything at all you can remember about the conversation with your son that might help us to find him, it would save a lot of valuable time.’

‘All I know is he went off on that silly little moped of his and that was that.’

‘So as far as you’re aware, he could be absolutely anywhere.’

The old woman raised her shoulders by no more than half an inch and let them fall again.

Logan rested his arm on the mantelpiece and drummed his fingers. ‘Mrs Hawkins, you do realise you’ve given us very little to go on here. You’ve made a very serious accusation about your son, and it’s essential that we find him as quickly as possible. As it stands though, we don’t even know where to start looking.’