‘I’m not saying that’s what happened, Danny,’ Harry warned. ‘But we should look at all possibilities. Now, you’d better tell me about your mum, her age, what she looked like, what she might have been wearing on the day she left.’

Danny and Patrick watched as Harry found the numbers he needed, asking Danny’s advice about local hospitals and which his mother was likely to have been taken to.

Patrick listened with amusement and Danny was in evident awe as Harry began his spiel. ‘Oh, good morning. I wonder if you can help me. I certainly hope so, the family is terribly worried …’ He paused, listening. ‘It’s my sister,’ he said, his voice shaking slightly. ‘You see, she’s missing and we’re worried she might … oh, thank you.’

He covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘They’re redirecting me. This could take a little while.’

‘Sister?’ Danny asked.

‘They won’t tell you anything if you’re not a relative,’ Patrick whispered as Harry resumed his conversation with someone else.

‘Yes, my sister. Sharon Fielding. Yes. No, it would have been just over two weeks ago. We did call just after she disappeared but …’

Harry allowed his voice to trail off as though distressed and Patrick could hear the sympathetic tones of the woman on the other end of the line.

Harry repeated the description Danny had given him and then covered the mouthpiece again. ‘She’s gone to check,’ he said. They waited and the woman returned. Harry thanked her and hung up the phone.

‘No, no one there,’ he said. ‘She did tell me though, that if they’d had an unknown patient for this long, they would probably have put out an appeal in the local paper. She gave me a couple of numbers to try, local papers, I think, just in case we missed it. We’ll try the other hospitals first and then get on to them.’

Patrick got up and filled the kettle. He was reminded horribly of watching Naomi go through this very process earlier in the year when a close friend had gone missing. She had called the hospitals for him then, asking the questions Harry was asking. Later the friend had turned up dead. Drowned in the canal with a mix of drugs and booze in his stomach and an accusation of murder hanging over his head. Watching Harry do this brought back such painful memories. He could imagine what Danny must be going through.

He made tea and gave Danny another can, watching and listening as Harry worked his way through the hospital list and then the numbers for the local papers. At the end of that he replaced the phone and blew out a frustrated breath. Gratefully he picked up the mug his son had placed on the table beside the directories.

‘Nothing?’ Patrick asked, though that was self evident.

‘No, we can cross those off the list. Now, what else do we have here?’ He glanced through the contacts that Danny had written down. ‘Let’s try the ones you have phone numbers for first,’ he said, ‘then we’ll try to figure out the rest. Do you want to talk to people or shall I?’

‘You think you can do it?’

‘Sure I can.’ Harry smiled at the boy who eyed him speculatively.

‘What you doing this for?’ Danny asked.

‘Why not?’ Harry shrugged. ‘You need help. And besides,’ he added, meeting the boy’s eyes and knowing more was required, ‘I had a sister once, she went missing. It was twenty years before I found out what happened to her. Twenty years of wondering and never being able to settle properly because there was always that thought that she would come through the door.’

Not the best of analogies, Patrick thought anxiously. Helen had died. Been murdered. But he knew what his dad meant. Patrick had grown up in the shadow of her memory and in the end it had been a relief for everyone that they could finally know what happened to her.

Danny, he noticed, did not ask. He sipped his coke and blinked hard and Patrick knew that he was trying not to cry. He looked away and Harry turned his attention back to the next number on the list.

‘Ah, good morning.’ The fourth call now and so far nothing gained. ‘No, I’m not selling anything. I’m calling about Sharon Fielding … My son is a friend of Danny’s.’

Pause. Harry listened, then, to Patrick’s surprise he raised his voice and spoke angrily into the phone. ‘Look, I’ve got the boy here now, sitting at my kitchen table, tearing his heart out because he doesn’t know what the hell happened to his mother. If you can’t give me a few minutes of your time …’

Pause, Patrick heard a woman shouting down the phone.

‘I’m sorry if you feel like that,’ Harry said. ‘But whatever you might have thought she was still his mother. I’d have thought a little compassion …’

Harry stared angrily at the phone. ‘Hung up,’ he said.

‘What was all that about?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Danny, this Ellen March, was she a close friend?’

Danny shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just found any numbers I could and writ them down. That was on a bit of paper under the phone book.’

‘Right. I see.’ Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at the remaining numbers.

‘What was her problem?’ Patrick asked.

Harry shrugged, but Patrick could tell this was something he didn’t want to talk about in front of Danny, so he let it go when his father simply said, ‘I think she was just touchy about a stranger asking her questions.’

Danny looked even more depressed than when he had first arrived. ‘You think it’s worth trying the rest?’ he asked.

Harry smiled at him. ‘Let’s give it a go.’ He glanced up at the kitchen clock. It was half past twelve. ‘Tell you what, you and Patrick make some lunch and I’ll do the rest of these on the other phone. The battery’s going on this one. I could hear it beeping on that last call.’

That wasn’t the only thing that needed beeping, Patrick thought. He’d caught enough of the woman’s language to register that.

Danny shrugged uncomfortably. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I guess so’

Patrick got up and went to the fridge. ‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘We’ve got ham and cheese and corned beef. Salad …’

Harry picked up the list and the phone and made his escape. One useful thing he had found out from Ellen March was that she wasn’t a friend of Sharon’s. From what she’d said to him, Harry would make a bet she was having an affair with Danny’s dad.

Twenty-Seven

Danny left just after two and Patrick wandered back upstairs to Rupert’s study. He had been flicking through the earlier journals he had noticed on Rupert’s shelf, looking for previous references to Kinnear. So far, he had found nothing and the journals did not appear to go back to the time of the robberies, but were obviously a habit Rupert had acquired only in the last ten years of his life.

A car pulling up on the gravel brought him to the window, thinking Alec and Naomi had returned. He was shocked to see Marcus.

‘Shit!’ Patrick muttered. He had left the journals and laptop downstairs in the dining room in plain view.

Racing downstairs he passed the front door as Marcus rang the bell for a second time. Harry was about to open it as Patrick dashed by, grabbing his record bag from the coat pegs as he ran.

‘Patrick?’ Harry had the door open now and Marcus was coming inside.

Patrick scooted into the dining room and grabbed the books and the ledger, stuffing them into his bag. Marcus stuck his head around the door to say hello just as Patrick was attempting to do the same with the laptop.

‘Hello, Patrick. How are you?’ Marcus smiled broadly, then his expression froze. ‘You’ve found Rupert’s laptop.’

‘No,’ Patrick lied. ‘It’s mine. I’ve been using it for homework.’

‘Homework? I thought you’d finished for the year.’

‘I have, but I’ve got a project to start. Get ready for next term. I’m carrying on with the same subjects, you see, so I can kind of get ahead.’

Marcus eyed him thoughtfully and Patrick knew he did not believe a word of it.