“Everybody else seems to have a line to call,” said Allen. “Or a something-or-other on the internet.”
They paused and looked at me.
To avoid their gaze, I looked around the garden which, unlike the house, was lush and blooming. What I thought were probably roses climbed up and around the kitchen door. A fat bumblebee nosed around the cab of a red and yellow Tonka truck before zigzagging lazily off amongst nodding ranks of orange, yellow and blue flowers. There was a drowsy quiet about the garden. I couldn’t hear the cars going past at the front, or the neighbour’s radio. We could have been in the middle of an ancient forest with the oak and ash and willow tree.
I looked sharply at Chess, who gave me a wide smile with just a hint of sly about the corners.
I mentally sang the sad lament of the hard-pressed copper.
Oh for I am not a social worker that these woes are placed upon my care.
“Stop that,” I told Chess, who giggled.
This would have to be sorted out, but not this afternoon.
“I’m not promising anything,” I said. “But I’ll see if I can arrange some assistance.”
They both looked stricken. Not social services, they said.
I had considered them, but what had Buckingham Social Services ever done to me that I was going to inflict a cheeky little godlet on them? I told Lillian and Allen I’d be in contact within a week and they were not to worry. At the very least, I thought, I can arrange a competent cleaner to come in and scrub out some of those corners.
Before I left I asked Chess whether he’d noticed anything strange recently. Given his age I thought it was unlikely. He looked up at me with his big pink face and casually pointed upstream.
“There,” he said. “Spooky stuff.”
“Really,” I said. “What kind of spooky stuff?”
His face screwed up in concentration.
“Don’t know,” he said. “It’s loud. Lots of shouting.”
“Can you hear what they’re shouting about?”
He shook his head.
“How long have they been shouting for?”
“Forever and ever,” said Chess, and went back to his game.
When you’re four, forever and ever can mean yesterday. But amongst my other policing skills I’ve acquired a proficiency in straw-clutching that verges on the savant. So I checked Google Maps on my phone and found that upstream was Chesham, the last stop on that branch of the Metropolitan Line and the furthest station out from London.
Jaget called me as I headed back for the Asbo and said he’d found a couple of likely candidates amongst the misper files.
“Did one of them live in Chesham?” I asked.
“As it happens,” he said, “yeah. Name of Brené McClaren. Lives in Chesham, commutes into London where she works for Islington Council as a social worker.”
And the princess liked to visit the people of the kingdom, I thought, especially the sick and unhappy.
“I think we’ve found our primary focus,” I said.
Chapter 6:
THE GHOST
WRANGLER
But not our only one, because the first rule of good policing means not haring down the first lead you get, however promising, until you’ve at least made a stab at eliminating the alternatives. Since, like our Brené McClaren, the alternatives—one from Amersham and the other from Rickmansworth—both fell into the jurisdiction of the Thames Valley Police, we would achieve this through the application of the second rule of good policing which is always try to get someone else to do the grunt work.
In this instance this was the aforementioned Thames Valley Police, who have about the same relationship with the Met as Everton FC has with Liverpool 4. Although these days both sides try to keep it professional when cooperating on a case. Jaget set up a meeting with the local plod in charge and hopped the next train up—I agreed to meet him at Chesham station.
Chesham is where the Metropolitan Line flounders to a stop and you could feel the town vacillating between being nothing more than a dormitory for London commuters and a county market town with a cookie-cutter pedestrianised high street. It’s the sort of white-bread rural ideal with good communication links favoured by media types who feel that they’ve done their bit for urban multiculturalism and are looking for somewhere comfortably vanilla to raise their kids.
The valley of the Chess narrows as it reaches the town and the station is one of those that ends up halfway up the side of the hill with a couple of steep roads down into the town centre. The station has the big car park and stuffed bicycle rack that is the proud mark of a commuter town but, alas, no coffee shop that is the true sign of civilisation. Not even one of those kiosk things which, I know from bitter experience, are a bastard to work in. I asked around and was told that all the cafés were on the High Street at the bottom of a steep hill. So I called Bev instead and chatted to her while I waited for Jaget.
“And he was, what, about four?” she said.
“The paediatrician they went to thought he was about two when they first had him checked out,” I said.
Beverley was amazed the doctor hadn’t reported them.
“They went private,” I said. “Hinted that he was Romanian.”
“Clever,” said Beverley. “I like them already.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But they’re in over their heads and I’m not even sure our little water baby isn’t using the influence on them. Which is, one might consider, a bit of an ethical dilemma.”
“Sounds a bit mythic to me,” she said. “Childless couple, foundling baby.” There was a pause and I heard a young woman’s voice asking a question. Then Bev came back on. “Chelsea wants to know if he strangled any snakes.”
I said that I’d be sure to ask at the next interview.
“The Chess isn’t my watershed, it’s not even my Mum’s watershed,” said Beverley. “Or the Old Man’s for that matter. It’s probably not a good idea for me to get involved.”
I said that she’d been fast enough to get involved in Herefordshire, but she said that was different.
“That was a favour. I had permission. There was mutual subsidiarity and all that style of thing.”
“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” I said.
“It’s the principle that central authority only acts when a problem can’t be solved at a local level,” said Bev, which shut me up—even though I still don’t think she was using the word right. Fortunately just then I saw Jaget coming out of the station and had an excuse to ring off.
Our TVP liaison was one DS Malcom Transcombe out of Amersham nick. He was a short, stout, white man with thinning red hair in his late forties and looked upon us with the delighted eye of a man who’s just had his workload doubled by a couple of likely lads from the big city.
He’d arranged to meet us in the car park to prove that he was a bit busy and could we get this out of the way quickly, and had arrived in a well-kept ten-year-old Rover 75 with a hideous purple custom spray job.
DS Transcombe leant back against the bonnet, crossed his arms and gave me and Jaget the eye.