Secret Sins: A Callie Anson (40 page)

A refreshment trolley was headed their way down the centre aisle. ‘Sandwiches?’ said a perky young woman in a striped shirt. ‘Snacks, hot and cold beverages?’

‘We’ve brought our own,’ said the mother smugly, continuing to unpack her bag.

The trolley paused at Alex’s row. ‘Sandwiches? Snacks, hot and cold beverages?’

Alex looked with longing at the packets of crisps, the
chocolate
bars, the biscuits. McDonald’s and her Big Mac were a distant memory. Her mouth watered. She could murder a bag of salt and vinegar crisps right now, or a Mars bar. ‘No, thank you,’ she said bravely.

The mother distributed wrapped packets of home-made sandwiches and bags of crisps to her brood while the dad poured something steaming and brown out of the flask into the cups.

Alex could see the little boy—around seven or eight, she guessed—in the aisle seat of the row in front of her. He looked suspicious as he began to peel the cling film from his sandwiches. ‘What sort are they?’ he asked.

‘They’re tuna and cucumber,’ said his mother. ‘Your
favourite
.’

‘They’re
not
my favourite. I
hate
cucumber. You know I hate cucumber.’

His mother frowned. ‘You didn’t hate cucumber last week, Henry.’

‘But I hate it now. It’s slimy and horrible.’

‘Then take the cucumber out,’ suggested his mother,
turning
her attention to another of her children, the one directly in front of Alex, and thus hidden from her view except in the reflection in the window.

Henry tore open his bag of crisps—a green bag, salt and vinegar, Alex noticed with a pang—and crunched them loudly. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Salt and vinegar. Yummy.’

‘Gross,’ said the oldest of the children, on the other side of the aisle. ‘They make your lips shrivel up.’

Alex got her money out and put it on the tray table attached to the seat-back in front of her, counting it yet again. Thirty-eight pounds, eighty-one pence. Maybe, just maybe, she could afford to spend a bit of it and buy a packet of crisps. If she could catch up the trolley at the back of the carriage…

While his mother’s attention was occupied elsewhere, Henry leaned round the seat and caught Alex’s eye, staring at the money on the tray table. Then he stretched his arm through the gap and dropped his whole packet of sandwiches on the empty seat next to her, turning back round before his mother noticed his sleight-of-hand.

Alex looked at them lying there for a long moment before she touched them. Food! Tuna and cucumber wasn’t exactly her
favourite either, but this was like a gift. It
was
a gift. Not to be scorned, but to be accepted thankfully.

At any minute Henry’s mother might discover the
mysterious
disappearance of his sandwiches and decide to investigate. Hastily Alex unwrapped the cling film and devoured them with single-minded intensity. When she’d finished, and tucked the tightly-wrapped ball of cling film into her pocket to hide the evidence, Henry turned round yet again, for just an instant, and favoured her with a solemn wink.

While Danny got on with his arcane work, as mysterious and opaque to Neville as brain surgery or nuclear physics, Neville tackled the challenge facing him head-on. He knew that he didn’t have the luxury of waiting, mulling it over, getting round to it in his own time. No: Alex was still missing, and this information was by far the most potentially valuable thing they had going for them. The Assistant Commissioner needed to be in possession of all the facts; his would be the decision about how much of this would be made available to the press. The press: their greatest friends, their biggest enemies. A two-edged sword.

He rang Evans’ home number, and was surprised to be told, by the lovely Denise, that her husband was not there; he had, it would seem, departed not long since for the police station.

Neville went upstairs, towards Evans’ corner office, and found the door standing open.

‘Come in, Stewart,’ Evans called out, the phone in his hand. ‘I’ve just arrived. Organising some coffee. Want some?’

He’d been drinking coffee all morning, it seemed, but another cup couldn’t hurt. ‘Yes, Sir. That would be good.’

Evans ordered an underling to bring some to his office, then put the phone down. ‘Looking for me, were you, Stewart?’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to be in today,’ Neville said. ‘With the family get-together and all.’

Evans chuckled. ‘To tell you the truth, Stewart, the in-laws were getting on my nerves a bit,’ he confided. ‘You’ve never been married, have you, Stewart?’

‘No, Sir. I haven’t had the…pleasure.’

‘Well, if you had done, you’d understand. Believe me. Fine in small doses, families, but they can be a bit much at times. Denise’s—Mrs. Evans’—father. What a know-it-all! And her mother never stops talking.’

Evans must have served, and partaken of, a few very nice bottles of wine last night, Neville reflected. He’d never seen him quite so confidential, or so mellow. Long may it last, he thought fervently.

In a few minutes the coffee arrived: two cups with proper saucers, along with a large plate of sandwiches. ‘Help yourself,’ invited Evans, so Neville took a triangle of ham-and-pickle and finished it off in one bite.

He could delay no longer. While Evans gulped at his coffee, he plunged into what he had to say. ‘The girl’s computer, Sir. There was an e-mail. From someone called Jack. Arranging to meet her yesterday evening at Paddington Station.’

‘Good God.’ Evans choked on the coffee, spluttered, then quickly recovered himself. ‘And what do we know about this Jack?’ he demanded.

‘She described him as her boyfriend. To her step-cousins. But I don’t think she’d met him before, Sir. He told her to wear something red, so I believe this was their first meeting.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘It could be quite innocent, of course.’ If only. ‘But—’

Evans was right there with him. ‘But he could be some bent paedophile. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

There, it was out. On the table. The worst-case scenario.

‘The computer chaps…’

‘They’re on to it,’ Neville assured him. ‘Printing out all of the e-mails for me. Trying to track him down electronically. I don’t understand it, but Danny assures me it can be done. He says they’ll find him.’

‘Good.’ Evans had put his coffee down and was picking up the phone. ‘I’ll ring the AC. He needs to know about this
straightaway. You go back to the computer lab and read those e-mails. All of them. You can précis them for me. Call in the CCTV footage from all round Paddington for the relevant time yesterday, and see if that shows anything. You might also check to see whether any promising calls have come in since it’s gone out on the news. Probably not, but you never know.’

Neville hesitated. ‘Sir, about Alex’s father…’

Evans shot him a knowing look. ‘I’ll ring him myself,’ he said, waving Neville out of the office.

Like a condemned man reprieved at the very last moment, Neville headed back towards the computer lab, smiling in spite of himself.

‘She’s been gone since yesterday afternoon,’ Morag said, the panic in her voice mingled with bitterness. ‘No one thought to let me know.’

Given what she’d heard about Morag’s son and his wife, Callie wasn’t surprised.

‘I had to hear it from a policeman. Angus
still
hasn’t rung me.’

Callie could see that Morag was badly shaken, even in shock. She hadn’t taken Callie’s coat or offered to make tea. ‘Shall I make some tea?’ Callie suggested. Morag could use it: the best remedy for shock.

‘Aye. All right.’

She left Bella behind with Morag in the sitting room; by the time she returned with the tea, the dog was on the sofa and Morag was cuddling her, as if receiving silent comfort. ‘I do miss my Macduff,’ Morag said.

Callie understood, without being told, how much else was behind those words. Macduff, Morag’s Cairn terrier, represented a whole way of life, now gone forever. Home, husband, family. Community. All gone, and in their place, a solitary existence in cruelly impersonal London.

‘Would you like me to ring your son?’ she offered as she poured the tea.

‘No. It wouldn’t do any good.’ Morag bent her face over Bella’s black-and-white head.

‘Did that policeman say why she’d left? Do they know? Did she just disappear from home?’

‘Jilly.’ This time there was no masking the bitterness in Morag’s voice. ‘She had a row with Jilly, he said. That woman is…she’s a monster. A selfish monster. I’ve tried to get on with her, for Angus’ sake. For Alex’s sake. The truth of it is that when she turned up at that dinner party, it was the worst day of all our lives.’

Callie was inclined to agree with her, but didn’t see what would be gained by saying so.

‘Tickets, please!’ announced a uniformed man, coming through from the forward carriage, brandishing a paper punch. ‘All tickets and rail cards!’

Alex’s heart thudded.

He was still half a carriage away from her, but if she got up and walked out now, everyone would notice. She would have to wait for her moment.

The first row was straightforward: tickets proffered, examined, punched and returned. But then there was a bit of a diversion. ‘Could I see your rail card, please, ma’am?’ requested the ticket man of a rather corpulent woman in a bright blue coat.

She fumbled in her handbag. ‘I don’t seem to have it,’ she said.

The ticket man frowned, scrutinising her more closely. ‘This is a rail card fare,’ he pointed out. ‘It states very clearly on the ticket that you must be in possession of a valid rail card.’

‘I do have one. I must have left it at home.’

Alex didn’t wait to hear any more; she scooted out of her seat and strolled, inconspicuously as possible, towards the toilet at the back end of the carriage.

No one looked at her as she went by, and no one watched as she locked herself in.

She had plenty of time to look at herself in the mirror: not a very pretty sight, she admitted. She looked like she’d slept rough, which she had. Of course her hair wasn’t very tidy at the best of times; that horrible frizz resisted all attempts to style it. Alex combed at it with her fingers and wet it down with a splash of water from the tap, then she moistened a paper towel and attempted to wash her face. She brushed her coat down with her hands, picking off a few bits of lint from the laundry. There: almost respectable. Allowing a few more minutes—just to be on the safe side—eventually she crept out and returned to her seat, as though she had every right in the world to be sitting in it.

She didn’t feel triumphant; she felt sick.

What would her mother say if she knew that she was a fare dodger? A common criminal, or just as good as. She’d seen the sign about the things that could happen to you if you boarded a train without a valid ticket. Mum would be ashamed of her. So would Granny.

Alex reminded herself, fiercely, that it was all in a good cause. She had to get to Mum. She had to. No matter what it took.

‘Now approaching Doncaster,’ came an announcement on the tannoy. ‘Next stop Doncaster. Change here for Grimsby, Selby, Hull and Wakefield.’