One Boy Missing(8)

He could remember his first summer back, nine months ago. He’d talked over the back fence with a neighbour, a fourth generation local by the name of Stuart who claimed his great-grandfather had built some sheds for a Moy, but didn’t think it was out as far as Cambrai. They’d talked two or three times and during their most recent conversation Moy had invited him over for a beer, but he’d never come.

Weeks later there was a heatwave. Moy had sat inside, huddled in front of his one horsepower air-conditioner, listening to Mr Stuart entertaining his friends in his swimming pool. Every day he’d go to work, to keep Guilderton safe, and come home to listen to the perpetual pool party. Couple of dozen children, he guessed, and fat old bastards dive-bombing their way through an endless Guilderton summer, as he sat and sweated. Thinking, why don’t you scrape your own fucking relatives off the road?

He went into the newsagent. The owner, a fat, stubble-headed man with a decent paunch and man-tits like Moy’s, stood behind the counter on a raised platform and asked, ‘What’ll it be, darls?’

Moy was still taken aback. He’d come across him before, parading around his shop in track pants that outlined a package the size of a Christmas pudding. A Scottish crypto-queen restocking his shelves with the Legume Journal as he stopped to chat with retired farmers in search of stud almanacs and soft porn. ‘What can I do for you, darls?’ Or love, like he was trapped in some sort of fly-blown Coronation Street. He was a local, apparently, but mainly just a curiosity. A sort of Ayr Street freak-show in pink shirts, even though everyone knew he wasn’t a poof. There was a wife, Betty, inscrutably manning the till, dispensing rolls of Lotto tickets like fencing wire from a cradle.

‘You don’t know anything about a young boy picked up in the back lane?’ Moy asked.

The newsagent leaned forward. ‘I heard,’ he said, lifting his eyebrows. ‘You’re a policeman?’

Moy said his piece, and showed him his card.

‘Listen, darls, I’ve already spoken to one of your little friends, and I told him I don’t get here until after eight. So that’s no good, is it?’

‘You’ve never seen a kid hanging around?’ Moy asked. ‘Nine, ten…brown hair?’

The newsagent shrugged. ‘They come in lookin’ for a few titties, but when they realise they’re all covered…’

‘That young?’

‘What else is there to do in this god-forsaken dump?’

And then Betty appeared. ‘Gentleman here’s looking for Scientific American,’ she said.

The newsagent looked over at the customer and said, ‘Oh, no, we don’t stock that one. We’ve never stocked that one.’

Moy continued along Ayr Street, past Goldsworthy’s Homemaker store, rifles and shotguns on display behind mesh in the window. The guns still had Christmas tinsel draped across their stocks. At Mango Meats: Country Killed Daily there was a trickle of blue water running down the inside of the front window. It gathered in a little trough surrounding a patch of synthetic grass. On the grass were melamine trays, and on the trays were miniature acres of red meat: rib-eye and loin, corned, porterhouse and rump.

He stepped inside, fronting up to a counter of chipped veneer. ‘Justin?’

The butcher shrugged, lifting his hands in mock surprise. ‘Hadn’t forgotten you, Detective…Bart. I was gonna pop over after it got quiet.’

‘I just wanted a quick word.’

Justin Davids turned to the sink and started washing his hands. ‘No luck?’ he asked.

‘No, nothing…which sorta makes you wonder.’

Davids dried his hands and forearms with an almost surgical concern. ‘Wonder?’

‘What’s actually going on?’

There was a long pause.

‘No one’s reported anyone missing. All of the kids are accounted for at school.’

Davids looked up at him. ‘So?’

‘It’s hard to say it’s a crime if you don’t know who’s done what to who. Whom.’

The butcher leaned forward, his head over a chopping board. ‘I know what I saw.’

‘No one’s doubting that,’ Moy replied.

‘I mean, the way you say it.’ He lowered his head, but looked up at Moy.

‘Justin, I’m guessing you’re a hundred percent correct. Something happened. But what?’

‘Well, you’re the copper.’

‘Was there anything that suggested this fella knew the kid? Anything the kid called him?’

‘No, just screaming and kicking.’

Moy paused, listening to the trickle of water. ‘Nothing in the body language?’