False Tongues (7 page)

Neville asked the big question. ‘How long?'

‘Oh, give me a day. Or two. It might take up to a week, depending.'

Trying to hide his disappointment, Neville turned away from the table, just as his phone rang.

Sid, the caller ID told him. ‘Yes?' he rasped into the phone.

‘I was too late,' Cowley said. ‘There's been a missing person report this morning. A fifteen-year-old boy. They've sent Dewi Jones.'

Neville's expletive caused Danny Duffy to drop his blade on the table with a clatter.

‘Steady on,' said Danny, looking shocked.

***

Pregnant?

Jane managed to get through breakfast, maintaining an outward semblance of normality for Brian's benefit.

‘No one at Morning Prayer,' he said conversationally as Jane poured his tea. ‘Not a soul. Just me and God.'

She bit back a tart comment on the fact that everyone else—everyone with sense—was away. As they could have been.
Should
have been.

None of that mattered if she was pregnant. Nothing else mattered.

It was all she'd wanted and longed for, tried so hard to achieve.

More than eighteen years since the twins were born. Eighteen years since she'd held a tiny, warm, fragrant new life in her arms. Through all those years she'd longed for a daughter—a little girl she could dress in frilly clothes, with whom she could join in dolls' tea parties and share delicious girly secrets.

And for eighteen years it had been utterly out of the question. On a vicar's stipend, bringing up the twins had been a constant struggle. Jane hadn't worked outside of the home—she strongly believed that the role of a vicar's wife was a calling in itself, and it was part of her job to make sure that the meagre resources stretched as far as she could make them stretch. Bills, school uniforms, the untold costs associated with growing boys: most of the time just feeding the four of them was a major financial achievement.

But then—miracle of miracles—a bequest had come out of the blue, an inheritance from an uncle. Not enough money to allow Brian to give up his job and live in the lap of luxury; enough, though, to make a difference to their lives.

And what could make more of a difference than to fulfil the dream of making their family complete, with a new baby?

Brian had been sceptical at first, even incredulous: they were both over forty, after all. Eventually he'd been won over by his wife's passionate arguments, and in spite of their GP's discouraging advice, they'd embarked on a regimen in which their love life was regulated by the calendar and Jane's obsessive temperature-taking.

The irony was, of course, that over Easter she hadn't had the time to worry about it. And now…

‘I was thinking,' Brian said, buttering his toast, ‘that since things are quiet this week, maybe we could go out for lunch today? Just the two of us?'

Jane stared at him. Obviously he was feeling guilty, and this was his way of being conciliatory, trying to make it up to her for not taking a week of holiday. But this was a first. He'd never, as long as they'd been married, suggested going out for lunch.

She wasn't ready to let him off the hook. Not yet, anyway. ‘I'll see,' she said. ‘I have an errand to run this morning.'

Brian gave her a puzzled frown. ‘What sort of errand?'

‘To the shops,' she said vaguely.

‘Are the shops even open? On the Bank Holiday?'

‘Yes, they'll be open.'

At least Jane hoped so; she knew she couldn't bear to wait another twenty-four hours.

She did manage to wait until breakfast was over and she'd done the washing up and tidied the kitchen. By then the shops would be opening, she reckoned. Grabbing a jacket and her shopping bag, she headed along Sussex Gardens toward the nearest branch of Boots, on the Edgware Road.

Why hadn't she bought a testing kit already? Jane asked herself as she turned the corner into the busy road. She should have had one in a drawer at home, ready for this moment. It had been superstition that had prevented her: that perverse, niggling fear of tempting the fates, jinxing her luck, by assuming too much. She'd never acknowledged it as such, and she knew that as a Christian it was unworthy of her to succumb to such nonsense, but it had been at the back of her mind nonetheless.

Well, now was the time.

The testing kits were toward the back of the shop. There were various ones on offer, a confusing array. Jane, deciding that they would all do the same job, chose one more or less at random and started to make her way back toward the tills at the front.

‘Jane!' Coming up the aisle toward her, smiling, was Wendy Page.

Instinctively, without even thinking about it, Jane shoved the test kit behind a bottle of shampoo on the shelves and picked up the first thing her hand fell on: a home hair-colouring kit, as luck would have it. ‘Oh, hello, Wendy,' she said, striving for a normal tone of voice.

‘Out shopping today?'

Jane, put out at the interruption, was torn between one sarcastic reply (‘What does it look like?') and another (‘Actually, I'm on holiday in Wales. You just
think
you see me.') Instead she did the proper vicar's wife thing and returned Wendy's smile. ‘Just a few bits and bobs.'

Wendy made a little face. ‘I had no intention of coming out to the shops today,' she revealed. ‘But would you believe it? Philip has run out of mouthwash. And nothing would do but I had to get him some.' She shook her head and rolled her eyes, adding ‘Men!' in an exasperated voice.

‘I know what you mean,' Jane improvised. ‘Brian's run out of…paracetamol.' She looked at the box in her hand and put it down hastily.

‘I'm not surprised he has a headache, with all he's had to do over Easter.'

Jane nodded. ‘Yes, well, it's all part of a vicar's job.' She knew she probably didn't sound very sympathetic. Brian didn't really have a headache, after all, and if he did it was no more than he deserved.

Wendy took a step back and gave her a long, searching look. ‘We all have our crosses to bear,' she pronounced, her words heavy with meaning.

***

Sid Cowley, to give him credit, had organised things swiftly. He'd got a car and was already waiting for Neville in the car park at the back of the station, smoking a cigarette.

‘Bloody Dewi Jones,' Neville growled, slamming the car door as he got into the passenger seat. ‘PC Dewi Bloody Jones. Give me strength.'

‘What do you have against Dewi Jones?' Cowley pinched out his fag and started the engine.

He knew that Sid was just winding him up, but Neville couldn't help himself. ‘Welsh twat,' he said acidly. ‘Wanker. Thinks he looks like bloody Robbie Williams.' Neville conjured up a mental picture of him: spiky gelled hair, tattoos. Muscle-bound body. ‘All brawn, no brains. Thick as you-know-what. The only reason he hasn't been kicked off the force onto his fit little backside is that he's Welsh. Evans has a soft spot for him.'

‘Oh, you're just jealous, then.'

Neville decided not to rise any further to the bait and changed the subject abruptly. ‘Where are we going, then?'

‘Not far.' Cowley eased the car out into traffic. ‘St Michael's Street. Do you know it?'

‘Doesn't sound familiar.'

‘The other side of Praed Street. Round the corner from the Tesco Metro. There's a decent pub in St Michael's Street,' Cowley added.

‘That would explain your familiarity with it.' Neville waited for the come-back, involving the words ‘pot' and ‘kettle,' but Sid seemed to have settled down to concentrate on his driving and was no longer engaged in point-scoring.

He needed to settle down as well, Neville realised. For some reason this case really had him on edge. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was about to be face-to-face with the parents of a missing boy, and that he was almost certainly going to have to tell them something that no parent ever wants to hear. There were a lot of things he hated about his job—the unpredictable and unsocial hours, the soul-destroying paperwork, getting chewed up by the press, being answerable to Evans, having to work with idiots like Dewi Jones—but this was the very worst part of it, the thing he hated the most.

Cowley turned the car off busy Praed Street, then turned again into a quiet residential road. ‘You'd never believe there was a street like this so close to everything, would you?' he remarked.

It was a very attractive short street of immaculate terraced houses, brown brick with red brick accents and painted white trim, set back from the pavement and protected by original spiky black iron railings. As Cowley said, it seemed a world away from the multicultural food joints of Praed Street, from the hospital and the railway station. St Michael's Street was genteel, old-fashioned, beautifully maintained. And quiet.

The north side of the street was marked out for parking, and contained a solid line of cars. ‘Residents' parking,' Cowley pointed out, crawling along slowly, looking for an empty space. ‘Bank Holiday today. No one's gone to work.'

Another police car had been parked illegally, outside of the designated spaces. Dewi Jones, Neville thought sourly. ‘Pull up behind him,' he directed.

It had to be done; no point putting it off by cruising round looking for a legal parking space. God only knew what sort of damage was being inflicted by Dewi Jones in the meantime.

Cowley parked the car, consulted his bit of paper, and checked the house numbers. ‘This one,' he said, pointing to the middle house in a three-house terrace. It had a shiny black door, flanked by bay trees in pots.

‘Right.' Neville squared his shoulders. ‘Let's get this over with. What are they called, then?'

‘Frost. Doctor and Mrs Frost.'

‘A doctor. That makes sense, this close to the hospital. And a posh house like this.' Neville opened the gate, marched the two steps to the door, and rang the bell.

The woman who opened the door was probably in her early forties, Neville judged. Short black hair, with large eyes magnified even bigger behind round spectacles. Thin—scrawny, even. Very pale, though whether habitually or as a result of the current circumstances was impossible to determine. Her eyes widened at the sight of them.

‘Mrs Frost?'

She nodded, swallowing visibly.

‘I'm Detective Inspector Stewart, ma'am, and this is Detective Sergeant Cowley. We'd like to have a word with you and your husband. May we come in?'

‘There's a policeman here already,' she said, opening the door wider. ‘PC Jones.'

Dewi Jones appeared behind her in the entrance hall, notebook in hand. Neville glared at him with contempt. ‘You can bugger off now.'

‘But—' PC Jones waved his notebook. ‘I need to talk to you.'

‘Later.'

Dewi Jones went, sputtering. Mrs Frost showed them into the front room, furnished with an expensive-looking three-piece suit and dominated by an enormous plasma screen. Neville glanced at Cowley, who was, as he'd expected, staring at the screen with naked lust.

A tall man with curly greying hair stood up and introduced himself as Richard Frost, shaking hands with grave courtesy. Mrs Frost offered them coffee; Neville declined, though he would have loved one. Coffee could wait.

He took the plunge, before she could invite them to sit. ‘About your son, Mrs Frost. Dr Frost. He's missing?'

‘Sebastian. Yes.' She nodded, her eyes widening still further as they met his.

‘Do you by any chance have a recent picture of your son that you could show me?'

‘Yes,' said Mrs Frost. ‘Yes, I do.'

***

Callie had time, before the first session was due to start, to ring Marco. Taking the precaution of locking her door to avoid interruption, she unplugged her phone from the charger and settled into the chair. It embraced her like an old friend, far more comfortable than any chair she now possessed; she gave its faded arm a fond pat.

Marco answered on the second ring. ‘
Cara Mia!
' he said, his voice anxious. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Yes, I'm fine.'

‘I've been trying to reach you, ever since yesterday afternoon. Your phone's been switched off. I've left a few messages…'

She hadn't listened to them yet, but could imagine their content. ‘Yes, I'm sorry. My phone ran out of juice. I've only just got it charged up again.'

‘Your trip was okay?'

‘Actually,' she confessed with a sigh, ‘it was the trip from hell.'

***

Interlude: a phone call

Wendy: ‘Hi, Liz. I'm just back from the shops.'

Liz: ‘Were they crowded?'

Wendy: ‘Surprisingly so. You'd think people would have better things to do on Easter Monday than go to the shops, but there you are. Anyway, you'll never guess who I saw in Boots.'

Liz: ‘The Duchess of Cornwall?'

Wendy: ‘Oh, very funny.'

Liz: ‘Surprise me, then.'

Wendy: ‘Jane Stanford.'

Liz: ‘I thought the Stanfords always went away after Easter.'

Wendy: ‘Not this year, evidently. Anyway, guess what she was buying?'

Liz: ‘Let me think. Porn? Not in Boots, I suppose.' (Laughing)

Wendy: ‘Oh, you
are
witty today.' (Dramatic pause) ‘No, she was buying hair dye!'

Liz: ‘Well, what's so amazing about that? I colour my hair. So do you, come to that.'

Wendy: ‘Yes, but Jane
doesn't
. Or at least she didn't, before now. Think about all that grey she has at the front.'

Liz: ‘I suppose she decided it was time to get rid of it.'

Wendy: ‘Yes, but here's the thing. She was looking at
red
dye. The name on the box was “Miss Scarlett.” Can you imagine Jane Stanford with red hair?'

Liz: ‘Not easily, I admit. But I suppose we'll be seeing it quite soon.'