Acid Row (16 page)

“What was the other matter?”

There was no reason not to reveal it as she'd shortly be hearing it from Franny herself. In any case, he needed information. "The missing child, Amy Biddulph, lived in his house for six months."

She let out a long sigh ... or a lungful of smoke. It was hard to tell from her steady voice if her emotions were engaged. "I warned Francesca," she said, 'but she wouldn't listen to me. It's her age.

She thinks she can control everything." She sounded disinterested, as though she were talking about a stranger.

“Do you know Townsend well?”

“Hardly at all. I'm friendly with his first wife.”

He pulled forward another piece of paper. "Could you tell me what you do know, Mrs. Gough? Perhaps you could start with why you warned your daughter against him."

“He's forty-five. She's eighteen. Do I need any other reason?”

Tyler hooked into the sharpness of her tone. "Zr there another reason?"

“Nothing I'm prepared to say to someone I've never met.”

"I'm a policeman, Mrs. Gough, and anything you tell me will be treated in confidence. This is urgent. Amy's been missing for over twenty-four hours and if you know something that can help her we need to hear it."

"Except you can't prove you're a policeman over the phone and I can't afford a libel suit. For all I know you could be a journalist."

She was right, but he wondered how anyone could be so detached about the fate of a child. “Senora Gough cures nothing.. .” "Then let's deal with one thing at a time. I'll give you the number of the Bella Vista in Puerto Soller. The manager's English is good and he's prepared to take your credit card number over the phone to settle the account and organize travel home for Francesca. I'll also give you the number of the operator here. When you phone through you can check on my credentials and leave a message for me to return the call. Is that acceptable to you?"

This time the sigh was unmistakable. “Not really.”

“She is your daughter, Mrs. Gough.”

There was a quiet laugh at the other end. "I know, and I wish I could say she wasn't. I might feel less guilty about my shortcomings. Do you have children, Inspector? Do they steal? Do they drink? Do they sleep around? Do they take drugs?" The questions were rhetorical because she didn't wait for answers. "I paid out 5,000 for Francesca on her eighteenth birthday to settle mobile phone and mail-order bills and to reimburse the parents of two of her friends whose credit card numbers she'd been using to order goods off the Net. I've written off her thieving from me, and I've set her up in a flat of her own to give her a chance to prove she's responsible. The quid pro quo for all of this was that she would never expect me to bail her out of a problem again, and she would take up the university place she's been offered.

Instead, she swans off to Majorca with my best friend's ex-husband and claims the reason I'm angry is because I'm jealous.“ She paused. ”So tell me, Inspector. What would you do in my shoes if a policeman phoned you and told you your daughter was in trouble .. . again?

Tyler answered honestly. “Stick to the rules I'd laid down.”

“Thank you.”

"But I'm not in your shoes, Mrs. Gough. I've been divorced longer than I was married and I don't have children. My entire experience of girls of Francesca's age was arresting them for theft and prostitution when I was a beat copper."

There was another short silence. “And?”

"I can't remember a single one that I didn't arrest at least twice though the average number of arrests per girl was more like five or six. They all said they were never going to do it again .. . but they were all back on the streets within days of being released because getting stoned on the money they made out of theft or prostitution was quicker and easier than saving up the pittance they could earn at Tesco's."

She wasn't a woman who rushed into speech. "I don't understand the point you're making," she murmured after a moment.

He was irritated by her silences. "I'm saying that habits are hard to break without a strong incentive, and few of us succeed the first time of asking. How many times have you tried to give up smoking?" he asked bluntly. "Once? Twice? Do you wake up every morning and say today's the day?"

She gave another sigh. "I hoped that making her responsible for herself would be an incentive."

“She's not ready for it.”

“She's eighteen.”

"But sounds and behaves like a twelve-year-old, and you don't hand a twelve-year-old the keys to a flat." He glanced at his watch. He didn't have time for this. Franny and her problems would have to wait.

"Look, I'm going to give you the numbers, anyway, and it's up to you what you do about them. Whatever you decide, will you please phone your daughter and explain? There's an outside chance she has a flight home, which one of my team is checking at the moment. I'll ask him to phone you with the result. Also, I do need to talk to you again. If you haven't left a message by six o'clock this evening, I'll come out to Southampton to interview you .. . either tonight or tomorrow morning."

“Do I have any choice in this?” she asked after he'd given her the numbers.

He ignored the question. "One last thing. You said you were friendly with Townsend's first wife. Presumably you're not going to give me her name and address until you've checked me out, so would you be good enough to contact her and ask her to call the incident room?"

She hesitated so long that he wondered if she'd hung up.

“Mrs. Gough?”

"I hoped she'd never find out that Francesca's been sleeping with Edward,“ she said unhappily. ”I thought it would all blow over and she wouldn't need to know."

“Why would she care?”

“She has a daughter of her own,” she said before cutting the line.

Nightingale Health Centre Harry Bonfield was reluctant to phone Sophie's parents until he'd spoken to her fiance, Bob Scudamore, but her parents' address was the only next-of-kin detail recorded against her notes. He remembered a psychiatrist friend in London whom Bob had mentioned over dinner one night as being a close colleague, and a phone call to him produced Bob's home and mobile numbers. Not for the first time, Harry blessed the club nature of the National Health Service. It was the biggest employer in the country, but it was still a village where someone knew someone who could put you in touch in an emergency.

The long-distance relationship that Sophie and Bob had conducted throughout her time at the Nightingale Health Centre had worried Harry considerably. Bob, five years older than she, was well up the ladder in the psychiatric department of one of the London teaching hospitals and Harry had assumed it was only a matter of time before he popped the question and Sophie returned to London. It was becoming harder and harder to recruit young doctors into general practice, and he was pessimistic about the chances of keeping one of the best they'd attracted in years.

His worst fears had been realized two months ago when Sophie had waggled a diamond ring under his nose. “What do you reckon?” she'd asked. “Am I wise or am I wise?”

“Bob?”

She laughed and gave him a punch on the arm. "Who else would it be?

God damn it, Harry, I don't have a cupboard full of secret lovers, you know!"

Belatedly, he stood up and pulled her into a warm hug. "Of course you're wise. He's a splendid chap. I just hope he appreciates how lucky he is to have you. When's the big day?"

“August.”

“Mm,” he said gloomily. "Is this your way of telling me you're about to hand in your notice?"

“God, no,” she said in surprise. "Bob's been given a consultancy at Southampton. He's been angling for it for ages. It means we can finally live together. That's why we're making it official." She lifted her eyebrows in perplexity. "What on earth made you think I'd want to leave?"

The blinkered stupidity of age and ingrained habit, he thought wryly as he sat down again. It had never occurred to him that the man would move for the woman, even if this was the twenty-first century.

He reached Bob at his flat in London. “What can I do for you, Harry?”

said the other amiably. "Are you calling because Sophie's going to be late?"

“Not exactly.” Harry told him baldly and succinctly what he knew. "I didn't want to phone her parents until I'd spoken to you .. . It's better, anyway, if you talk to them." He paused for confirmation.

"Good. Also, we need your help. Jenny says Sophie's very conscientious about keeping her mobile charged, so we're assuming she's turned it off because she doesn't want these men to know she's got it.

That means there's a good chance she'll call again as soon as she has an opportunity .. . and I'd be happier if I had someone here who was qualified to talk to them and negotiate her release."

“I'm leaving now,” said Bob. “I'll call her parents on the way.”

“We may not be able to wait for you,” said Harry urgently. "We need someone closer. The police have been caught on the hop .. . say they couldn't have predicted it ... the riot's blown up out of nowhere .. .

and they're overstretched with this kid going missing twenty miles away. We've a young constable trying to help us but he can't even raise the probation office at the moment. It's complete bedlam. It would be useful to locate the psychiatrist who wrote Zelowski's pre-sentencing report, or anyone who saw him while he was inside. I can give you the two prisons he spent time in. They're both fairly local. Would that help you find a name for me? Even better, a copy of the report itself?"

Bob didn't waste time. “Give them to me,” he said. "Also your direct line and the surgery's fax number. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.“ He paused just before he rang off. ”Harry?"

“Yes.”

"If she calls before I get there, tell her not to provoke them .. .

particularly the one who wants to rape her. If he's as dangerous as you think he is, it will only excite him."

Outside 9 Humbert Street Gaynor Patterson was terrified. She was trapped against the wall of a house in Humbert Street, unable to advance, unable to retreat. There was no freedom to move, just a press of humanity all around her jostling to stay on its feet between the houses and the cars parked along the kerb. Down the middle of the road, phalanxes of youths were charging in chaotic sc rums to get to 23 and join the fun, but with each thrust of their powerful bodies, a compensatory ripple spread through the encircling crowd driving it backwards.

Youngsters had sought escape on the roofs and bonnets of vehicles, but they were precarious refuges. Every time a wave surged against them the cars rocked on their suspensions and footing was lost. It was only a matter of time, she guessed, before the idea of turning the cars over and spinning them on their roofs would appeal to the wilder element in the crowd, and then people really would be hurt.

Her frantic 999 call on her mobile fifteen minutes earlier had increased her fear when a computerized voice informed her that the emergency operators were overwhelmed with callers reporting the disturbance in Bassindale. The police were unable to respond immediately. Callers with other emergencies should stay on the line.

The advice to anyone in Bassindale not involved in the disturbance was to remain inside their homes.

Gaynor, who had seen footage of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster, when football fans had been mercilessly crushed by a stampede of people behind them, was terrified that a sudden catastrophic surge would cause the people against the wall to be suffocated. She was doing her best to protect those around her mostly young girls who had fled to the edge to find safety -but it was getting harder and harder. She had shouted herself hoarse in a vain attempt to alert the people in the middle to their plight, but her voice was drowned by the youths' shouting.

Desperate to find out what had happened to Melanie, and after her own attempts to raise her daughter had failed, she had handed her mobile to a girl at her side and told her to keep pressing the '!" button till someone answered. “Give it back to me when it rings,” she said, while she shielded the youngster with her body. She tried to attract the attention of a man some twenty yards away who was big enough to make his way through to them, but he remained stubbornly deaf to her shouts.

Tired and tearful, the girl gave up after ten minutes. "It ain't no fucking use,“ she wailed, 'no one's answering.” She started hitting at Gaynor as claustrophobia overwhelmed her. “I wanna get out!” she screamed. “I wanna get out!”

Gaynor smacked her hard across the face. “Sorry, sweetheart,” she murmured, folding the child in her arms as she burst into tears, 'but it's too dangerous. You must stay here till I can work something out."

But what, for God's sake?

The phone began to ring.

She grabbed it from the youngster, pressing a palm to her other ear so that she could hear above the din. "Mel? Is that you, sweetheart?

I've been calling and calling. Are you all right? What about Rosie and Ben?"

“Mrs. Patterson?”

“Oh, shit!” swore Gaynor in disappointment, close to tears herself. "I thought it was my daughter."

"I'm so sorry. It's Jennifer Monroe at the Nightingale Health Centre.

Briony gave me your number. I need to talk to you very urgently."

Gaynor shook her head in disbelief. "You've got to be joking. Listen love, whatever it is, it can wait. Even if you're going to tell me I've got terminal cancer, it's no way as urgent as what's happening here. Everything's out of control .. . there's no sign of the fucking police .. . and I'm trapped against a wall with some young kids who're shit-scared. It's like Hills-borough, for Christ's sake. There's got to be over a thousand people squashed into this bit alone. I'm going to hang up. OK?"

“Don't!” said Jenny sharply. "I probably know more than you do at the moment. Keep talking to me, please. This has nothing to do with medicine, Gaynor. I'm trying to help you.

The police can't enter the estate because all the roads are barricaded.

That means you and Melanie must find safety for yourselves and I might be able to help you if you let me."