Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

Chapter 2

Up in Yorkshire two days later, the sky was far from cloudless, and the sun was definitely not shining. It had not, in fact, shone since Banks had left for Greece, reflected Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot as she pushed yet another pile of paperwork aside and put her feet up on the desk. It was as if the bugger had gone and taken all the sunshine with him. Nothing but cold rain, gray skies, and more rain. And this was August. Where was summer?

Annie had to admit that she missed Banks. She had ended their romantic relationship, but there was no one else in her life, and she enjoyed his company and his professional insight. In her weaker moments, too, she sometimes wished they had managed to remain lovers, but it wasn’t a valid option, given his family baggage and her renewed interest in her career. Too many complications involved in sleeping with the boss. On the plus side, she had found far more time for her painting, and had started meditation and yoga again.

Not that she couldn’t understand why Banks had gone. The poor sod had simply had enough. He needed to recharge his batteries, gird his loins before he entered back into the fray. A month should do it, Assistant Chief Constable Ron McLaughlin had agreed, and Banks had more than enough accrued leave for that. So he had buggered off to Greece, taking the sunshine with him. Lucky sod.

At least Banks’s temporary absence meant a quick transfer for Annie from Complaints and Discipline back to CID at the rank of detective inspector, which was what she had been angling for. She didn’t have her own office anymore, however, only a semipartitioned corner in the detectives’ squad room along with DS Hatchley and six DCs, including Winsome Jackman, Kevin Templeton and Gavin Rickerd, but it was worth the sacrifice to be away from that fat sexist lecher Detective Superintendent Chambers, not to mention a welcome change from the kind of dirty jobs she had been given under his command.

There hadn’t been much more crime than sun in the Western Area lately, either, except in Harrogate, of all places, where a mysterious epidemic of egg-throwing had broken out. Youths seemed to have taken to throwing eggs at passing cars, old folks’ windows and even at police stations. But that was Harrogate, not Eastvale. Which was why Annie, bored with looking over reports, mission statements, circulars and cost-cutting proposals, perked her ears up when she heard the tapping of Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s walking stick approaching the office door. She took her feet off the desk, as much so that Gristhorpe wouldn’t notice her red suede ankle boots as anything else, tucked her wavy chestnut hair behind her ears and pretended to be buried deep in the paperwork.

Gristhorpe walked over to her desk. He’d lost quite a bit of weight since he shattered his ankle, but he still looked robust enough. Even so, rumor had it that he had been heard to broach the subject of retirement. “Owt on, Annie?” he asked.

Annie gestured to the papers strewn over her desk. “Not a lot.”

“Only there’s this boy gone missing. Schoolboy, aged fifteen.”

“How long ago?”

“Didn’t come home last night.” Gristhorpe put the misper report in front of her. “Parents have been calling us since yesterday evening.”

Annie raised her eyebrows. “A bit soon to bring us in on it, isn’t it, sir? Kids go missing all the time. Fifteen-year-olds in particular.”

Gristhorpe scratched his chin. “Not ones called Luke Armitage, they don’t.”

“Luke Armitage? Not…”

“Aye. Martin Armitage’s son. Stepson, to be accurate.”

“Oh, shit.” Martin Armitage was an ex-football player, who in his time had been one of the major strikers of the Premier League. Since retiring from professional sport, he had become something of a country gentleman. He lived with his wife and stepson Luke in Swainsdale Hall, a magnificent manor house perched on the daleside above Fortford. Armitage was known as a “Champagne” socialist because he professed to have left-wing leanings, gave to charities, especially those supporting and promoting children’s sporting activities, and chose to send his son to East-vale Comprehensive instead of to a public school.

His wife, Robin Fetherling, had once been a celebrated model, well enough known in her field as Martin Armitage was in his, and her exploits, including drugs, wild parties and stormy public affairs with a variety of rock stars, had provided plenty of fodder twenty years ago or more, when Annie was a teenager. Robin Fetherling and Neil Byrd had been a hot item, the beautiful young couple of the moment, when Annie was at the University of Exeter. She had even listened to Neil Byrd’s records in her student flat, but she hadn’t heard his name, or his music, in years – hardly surprising, as she had neither the time nor the inclination to keep up with pop music these days. She remembered reading that Robin and Neil had had a baby out of wedlock about fifteen years ago. Luke. Then they split up, and Neil Byrd committed suicide while the child was still very young.

“Oh, shit, indeed,” said Gristhorpe. “I’d not like to think we give better service to the rich and famous than to the poor, Annie, but perhaps you could go and try to set the parents at ease. The kid’s probably gone gallivanting off with his mates, run away to London or something, but you know what people’s imaginations can get up to.”

“Where did he disappear from, sir?”

“We don’t know for certain. He’d been into town yesterday afternoon, and when he didn’t come home for tea they started to get worried. At first they thought he might have met up with some mates, but when it got dark and he still wasn’t home they started to get worried. By this morning, they were frantic, of course. Turns out the lad carried a mobile with him, so they’re sure he would have rung if anything came up.”

Annie frowned. “That does sound odd. Have they tried ringing him?”

“No signal. They say his phone’s switched off.”

Annie stood up and reached for her umbrella. “I’ll go over there and talk to them now.”

“And, Annie?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You hardly need me to tell you this, but try to keep as low a profile as possible. The last thing we want is the local press on the case.”

“Softly, softly, sir.”

Gristhorpe nodded. “Good.”

Annie walked toward the door.

“Nice boots,” said Gristhorpe from behind her.

Banks remembered the days surrounding Graham Marshall’s disappearance more clearly than he remembered most days that long ago, he realized as he closed his eyes and settled back in the airplane seat, though memory, he found, tended to take more of a cavalier view of the past than an accurate one; it conflated, condensed and transposed. It metamorphosed, as Alex had said last night.

Weeks, months, years were spread out in his mind’s eye, but not necessarily in chronological order. The emotions and incidents might be easy enough to relocate and remember, but sometimes, as in police work, you have to rely on external evidence to reconstruct the true sequence. Whether he had got caught shoplifting in Woolworth’s in 1963 or 1965, for example, he couldn’t remember, though he recollected with absolute clarity the sense of fear and helplessness in that cramped triangular room under the escalator, the cloying smell of Old Spice aftershave and the way the two dark-suited shop detectives laughed as they pushed him about and made him empty his pockets. But when he thought about it more, he remembered it was also the same day he had bought the brand-new With the Beatles LP, which was released in late November 1963.

And that was the way it often happened. Remember one small thing – a smell, a piece of music, the weather, a fragment of conversation – then scrutinize it, question it from every angle, and before you know it, there’s another piece of information you thought you’d forgotten. And another. It didn’t always work, but sometimes when he did this, Banks ended up creating a film of his own past, a film which he was both watching and acting in at the same time. He could see what clothes he was wearing, knew what he was feeling, what people were saying, how warm or cold it was. Sometimes the sheer reality of the memory terrified him and he had to snap himself out of it in a cold sweat.

Just over a week after he had returned from a holiday in Blackpool with the Banks family, Graham Marshall had disappeared during his Sunday-morning paper round out of Donald Bradford’s newsagent’s shop across the main road, a round he had been walking for about six months, and one that Banks himself had walked a year or so earlier, when Mr. Thackeray owned the shop. At first, of course, nobody knew anything about what had happened, apart from Mr. and Mrs. Marshall and the police.

As Banks leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, he tried to reconstruct that Sunday. It would have started in the normal way. On weekends, Banks usually stayed in bed until lunchtime, when his mother called him down for the roast. During lunch they would listen to the radio comedies on the Light Programme: The Navy Lark and Round the Horne, until The Billy Cotton Band Show drove Banks out of doors to meet up with his friends on the estate.

Sometimes, the five of them – Banks, Graham, Steve Hill, Paul Major and Dave Grenfell – would go walking in the local park, staking out an area of grass near the playing fields, and listen to Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops on Paul’s trannie, watching the girls walk by. Sometimes Steve would get bold and offer one of them a couple of Woodbines to toss him off, but mostly, they just watched and yearned from a distance.

Other Sundays they’d gather at Paul’s and play records, which was what they did on the day Graham disappeared, Banks remembered. Paul’s was best because he had a new Dansette which he would bring outside on the steps if the weather was good. They didn’t play the music too loudly, so nobody complained. If Paul’s mum and dad were out, they’d sneak a cigarette or two as well. That Sunday, everyone was there except Graham, and nobody knew why he was missing, unless his parents were keeping him in the house for some reason. They could be strict, Graham’s parents, especially his dad. Still, whatever the reason, he wasn’t there, and nobody thought too much of it.

There they would be, then, sitting on the steps, wearing their twelve-inch-bottom drainpipe trousers, tight-fitting shirts and winkle-pickers, hair about as long as they could grow it before their parents prescribed a trip to Mad Freddy’s, the local barber’s. No doubt they played other music, but the highlights of that day, Banks remembered, were Steve’s pristine copy of the latest Bob Dylan LP, Bringing It All Back Home, and Banks’s Help!

Along with his fascination with masturbation, Steve Hill had some rather way-out tastes in music. Other kids might like Sandie Shaw, Cliff Richard and Cilla Black, but for Steve it was The Animals, The Who and Bob Dylan. Banks and Graham were with him most of the way, though Banks also enjoyed some of the more traditional pop music, like Dusty Springfield and Gene Pitney, while Dave and Paul were more conservative, sticking with Roy Orbison and Elvis. Of course, everybody hated Val Doonican, Jim Reeves and The Bachelors.

That day, songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” transported Banks to places he didn’t know existed, and the mysterious love songs “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” and “She Belongs to Me” lingered with him for days. Though Banks had to admit he didn’t understand a word Dylan was singing about, there was something magical about the songs, even vaguely frightening, like a beautiful dream in which someone starts speaking gibberish. But perhaps that was hindsight. This was only the beginning. He didn’t become a full-fledged Dylan fan until “Like a Rolling Stone” knocked him for a loop a month or two later, and he wouldn’t claim, even today, to know what Dylan was singing about half the time.

The girls from down the street walked by at one point, as they always did, very Mod in their miniskirts and Mary Quant hairdos, all bobs, fringes and headbands, eye makeup laid on with a trowel, lips pale and pink, noses in the air. They were sixteen, far too old for Banks or his friends, and they all had eighteen-year-old boyfriends with Vespas or Lambrettas.

Dave left early, saying he had to go to his grandparents’ house in Ely for tea, though Banks thought it was because Dylan was getting up his nose. Steve headed off a few minutes later, taking his LP with him. Banks couldn’t remember the exact time, but he was certain that he and Paul were listening to “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” when they saw the Ford Zephyr cruising down the street. It couldn’t have been the first one, because Graham had been missing since morning, but it was the first one they saw. Paul pointed and started whistling the Z Cars theme music. Police cars weren’t a novelty on the estate, but they were still rare enough visitors in those days to be noticed. The car stopped at number 58, Graham’s house, and two uniformed officers got out and knocked on the door.

Banks remembered watching as Mrs. Marshall opened the door, thin cardie wrapped around her, despite the warmth of day, and the two policemen took off their hats and followed her into the house. After that, nothing was ever quite the same on the estate.

Back in the twenty-first century, Banks opened his eyes and rubbed them. The memory had made him even more tired. He’d had a devil of a time getting to Athens the other day, and when he had got there it was only to find that he couldn’t get a flight home until the following morning. He’d had to spend the night in a cheap hotel, and he hadn’t slept well, surrounded by the noise and bustle of a big city, after the peace and quiet of his island retreat.

Now the plane was flying up the Adriatic, between Italy and the former Yugoslavia. Banks was sitting on the left and the sky was so cloudless he fancied he could see all of Italy stretched out below him, greens and blues and earth colors, from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean: mountains, the crater of a volcano, vineyards, the cluster of a village and sprawl of a large city. Soon he would be landing back in Manchester, and soon the quest would begin in earnest. Graham Marshall’s bones had been found, and Banks damn well wanted to know how and why they had ended up where they did.

Annie turned off the B-road between Fortford and Relton onto the gravel drive of Swainsdale Hall. Elm, sycamore and ash dotted the landscape and obscured the view of the hall itself until the last curve, when it was revealed in all its splendor. Built of local limestone and millstone grit in the seventeenth century, the hall was a long, two-story symmetrical stone building with a central chimney stack and stone-mullioned windows. The Dale’s leading family, the Blackwoods, had lived there until they had died out in the way many old aristocratic families had died out: lack of money and no suitable heirs. Though Martin Armitage had bought the place for a song, so the stories went, the cost of upkeep was crippling, and Annie could see, as she approached, that parts of the flagstone roof were in a state of disrepair.

Annie parked in front of the hall and glanced through the slanting rain over the Dale. It was a magnificent view. Beyond the low hump of the earthworks in the lower field, an ancient Celtic defense against the invading Romans, she could see the entire green valley spread out before her, from the meandering river Swain all the way up the opposite side to the gray limestone scars, which seemed to grin like a skeleton’s teeth. The dark, stubby ruins of Devraulx Abbey were visible about halfway up the opposite daleside, as was the village of Lyndgarth with its square church tower and smoke rising from chimneys over roofs darkened by the rain.

A dog barked inside the house as Annie approached the door. More of a cat person herself, she hated the way dogs rushed up when visitors arrived and barked and jumped at you, slobbered and sniffed your crotch, created chaos in the hall while the apologetic owner tried to control the animal’s enthusiasm and explain how it really was just very friendly.

This time was no exception. However, the young woman who opened the door got a firm grip on the dog’s collar before it could drool on Annie’s skirt, and another woman appeared behind her. “Miata!” she called out. “Behave! Josie, would you take Miata to the scullery, please?”

“Yes, ma’m.” Josie disappeared, half-dragging the frustrated Dobermann along with her.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “She gets so excited when we have visitors. She’s only being friendly.”

“Miata. Nice name,” said Annie, and introduced herself.

“Thank you.” The woman held out her hand. “I’m Robin Armitage. Please come in.”

Annie followed Robin down the hall and through a door on the right. The room was enormous, reminiscent of an old banquet hall, with antique furniture scattered around a beautiful central Persian rug, a grand piano, and a stone fireplace bigger than Annie’s entire cottage. On the wall over the mantelpiece hung what looked to Annie’s trained eye like a genuine Matisse.

The man who had been staring out of the back window over a lawn the size of a golf course turned when Annie entered. Like his wife, he looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. He introduced himself as Martin Armitage and shook her hand. His grip was firm and brief.

Martin Armitage was over six feet tall, handsome in a rugged, athletic sort of way, with his hair shaved almost to his skull, the way many footballers wore it. He was slim, long-legged and fit, as befitted an ex-sportsman, and even his casual clothes, jeans and a loose hand-knit sweater, looked as if they had cost more than Annie’s monthly salary. He glanced down at Annie’s boots, and she wished she’d gone for something more conservative that morning. But how was she to know?

“Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe told me about Luke,” Annie said.

“Yes.” Robin Armitage tried to smile, but it came out like the twentieth take of a commercial shoot. “Look, I’ll have Josie bring us some tea – or coffee, if you’d prefer it?”

“Tea would be fine, thanks,” said Annie, perching carefully on the edge of an antique armchair. One of the most civilized things about being a policewoman, she thought, especially working in plainclothes, was that the people you visited – witnesses, victims and villains alike – invariably offered you some sort of refreshment. Usually tea. It was as English as fish and chips. From what she had read, or seen on television, she couldn’t imagine anything like it happening anywhere else in the world. But for all she knew, perhaps the French offered wine when a gendarme came to call.

“I know how upsetting something like this can be,” Annie began, “but in ninety-nine percent of cases there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Robin raised a finely plucked eyebrow. “Do you mean that? You’re not just saying it to make us feel better?”

“It’s true. You’d be surprised how many mispers we get – sorry, that’s police talk for missing persons – and most of them turn up none the worse for wear.”

“Most of them?” echoed Martin Armitage.

“I’m just telling you that statistically he’s likely-”

“Statistically? What kind of-”

“Martin! Calm down. She’s only trying to help.” Robin turned to Annie. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but neither of us has had much sleep. Luke’s never done anything like this before, and we really are quite frantic with worry. Nothing short of seeing Luke back here safe and sound will change that. Please, tell us where you think he is.”

“I wish I could answer that, I really do,” said Annie. She took out her notebook. “Can I just get some information from you?”

Martin Armitage ran his hand over his head, sighed and flopped down on the sofa again. “Yes, of course,” he said. “And I apologize. My nerves are a bit frazzled, that’s all.” When he looked right at her, she could see the concern in his eyes, and she could also see the steely gaze of a man who usually got what he wanted. Josie came in with tea, which she served on a silver tray. Annie felt a bit embarrassed, the way she always did around servants.

Martin Armitage’s lip curled in a smile, as if he had noticed her discomfort. “A bit pretentious, isn’t it?” he said. “I suppose you’re wondering why a dyed-in-the-wool socialist like me employs a maid? It’s not as if I don’t know how to make a cup of tea. I grew up with six brothers in a West Yorkshire mining town so small nobody even noticed when Maggie Thatcher wiped it off the face of the earth. Bread and dripping for breakfast, if you were lucky. That sort of thing. Robin here grew up on a small farm in Devon.”

And how many millions of pounds ago was that? Annie wondered, but she wasn’t here to discuss their lifestyle. “It’s none of my business,” she said. “I should imagine you’re both very busy, you can use the help.” She paused. “Just as long as you don’t expect me to stick my little finger in the air while I drink my tea.”

Martin managed a weak laugh. “I always like to dunk digestive biscuits in mine.” Then he leaned forward and became serious again. “But you’re not going to make me feel better by distracting me. What can we do? Where do we look? Where do we begin?”

“We’ll do the looking. That’s what we’re here for. When did you first start to believe something was wrong?”

Martin looked at his wife. “When was it, love? After tea, early evening?”

Robin nodded. “He’s always home for tea. When he wasn’t back by after seven o’clock and we hadn’t heard from him, we started to get worried.”

“What did you do?”

“We tried to call him on his mobile,” Martin said.

“And what happened?”

“It was turned off.”

“Then what?”

“Well, about eight o’clock,” Robin said, “Martin went looking for him.”

“Where did you look, Mr. Armitage?”

“I just drove around Eastvale. A bit aimless, really. But I had to do something. Robin stayed home in case he rang or turned up.”

“How long were you gone?”

“Not long. I was back, oh, around ten.”

Robin nodded in agreement.

“Do you have a recent photograph of Luke?” Annie asked. “Something we can circulate.”

Robin went over to one of the low polished tables and picked up a package of prints. She thumbed through them and handed one to Annie. “This was taken at Easter. We took Luke to Paris for the holidays. Will it do?” Annie looked at the photograph. It showed a tall, thin young man, dark hair curling around his ears and brow, who looked older than his fifteen years, even to the point of having the fluffy beginnings of a goatee. He was standing by a grave in an old cemetery looking moody and contemplative, but his face was out of the shadows, and close enough to the camera to be useful for identification purposes.

“He insisted on visiting the Père Lachaise cemetery,” Robin explained. “That’s where all the famous people are buried. Chopin. Balzac. Proust. Edith Piaf. Colette. Luke’s standing by Jim Morrison’s grave there. Have you heard of Jim Morrison?”

“I’ve heard of him,” said Annie, who remembered friends of her father’s playing loud Doors records even years after Morrison’s death. “Light My Fire” and “The End” in particular had lodged themselves somewhere in her memories of those days.

“It’s funny,” said Robin, “but most of the people making pilgrimages to that grave weren’t even born when he was at the height of his popularity. Even I was just a little girl when the Doors were first big.”

That placed her in her early forties, Annie guessed, and still a striking figure. Robin Armitage’s golden tresses hung over her narrow shoulders and shone every bit as much in real life as they did in her magazine adverts for shampoo. Despite the signs of strain and worry, hardly a line marred her smooth, pale complexion. Though Robin was shorter than Annie had imagined, her figure looked as slender as it had been in all the posters Annie had ever seen of her, and those lips, which had so tantalizingly sucked the low-fat ice cream off the spoon in a famous television commercial some years ago, were still as full and pink as ever. Even the beauty spot Annie had always imagined was fake was still there, at the corner of her mouth, and close up it looked real.

Yes, Robin Armitage looked as good as she had twenty years ago. Annie thought she ought to hate the woman on sight, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t just because of the missing boy, either, she told herself, but she sensed something very human, very vulnerable behind the exquisitely packaged model’s facade.

“This’ll do fine,” said Annie, slipping the photograph into her briefcase. “I’ll get it circulated as soon as I get back. What was he wearing?”

“The usual,” said Robin. “Black T-shirt and black jeans.”

“You say ‘the usual.’ Do you mean he always wears black?”

“It’s a phase,” said Martin Armitage. “Or at least that’s what his mother tells me.”

“It is, Martin. You wait; he’ll grow out of it. If we ever see him again.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Armitage. He’ll turn up. In the meantime, I’d like more information about Luke himself, anything you know about his friends, interests or acquaintances that could help us work out where he may be. First of all, was everything all right between you? Had there been any arguments recently?”

“Not that I can think of,” Robin answered. “I mean, nothing serious. Everything was fine between us. Luke had everything he wanted.”

“It’s been my experience,” said Annie, “that nobody ever has everything they want, even if someone who loves them very dearly thinks they have. Human needs are so various and so hard to define at times.”

“I didn’t only mean material things,” said Robin. “As a matter of fact, Luke isn’t much interested in the things money can buy, except for electronic gadgets and books.” Her long-lashed blue eyes blurred with tears. “I meant that he has all the love we can give him.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Annie. “What I was thinking, though, was that maybe there was something he wanted to do that you wouldn’t let him?”

“Like what?” asked Robin.

“Something you didn’t approve of. A pop concert he wanted to go to. Friends you didn’t like him being with. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. But I can’t think of anything. Can you, darling?”

Martin Armitage shook his head. “As parents go, I think we’re pretty liberal,” he said. “We realize kids grow up quickly these days. I grew up quickly myself. And Luke’s a smart lad. I can’t think of any films I wouldn’t want him to see, except for pornography, of course. He’s also a quiet, shy sort of boy, not much of a mixer. He keeps to himself.”

“He’s very creative,” Robin added. “He loves to read and he writes stories and poems. When we were in France, it was all Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire.”

Annie had heard of some of those poets through her father, had even read some of them. She thought they were a little advanced for a fifteen-year-old boy, then she remembered that Rimbaud started writing poetry at fifteen and gave it up at nineteen.

“What about girlfriends?” Annie asked.

“He never mentioned anyone,” said Robin.

“He might be embarrassed to tell you,” Annie suggested.

“I’m sure we’d have known.”

Annie changed tack and made a note to look into Luke’s love life, or lack of it, later, if necessary. “I don’t know how to put this any more diplomatically,” she said, “but I understand you’re not Luke’s biological father, Mr. Armitage?”

“True. He’s my stepson. But I’ve always thought of him as my own son. Robin and I have been married ten years now. Luke has our family name.”

“Tell me about Luke’s father, Mrs. Armitage.”

Robin glanced over at her husband

“It’s all right, darling,” Martin Armitage said. “It doesn’t bother me if you talk about him, though I can’t quite see the point of all this.”

Robin turned back to Annie. “Actually, I’m surprised you don’t know already, given the inordinate amount of interest the gutter press took in the whole affair at the time. It’s Neil Byrd. I thought most people knew about Neil and me.”

“Oh, I know who he was and what happened. I just don’t remember the details. He was a pop singer, wasn’t he?”

“A pop singer? He’d have been disgusted to hear himself called that. He thought of himself more as a sort of modern troubadour, more of a poet than anything else.”

From singer-songwriter to footballer, Annie thought, the way Marilyn Monroe went from baseball player to playwright. There was clearly more to Robin Armitage than met the eye. “Please excuse my ignorance and refresh my memory,” she said.

Robin glanced out of the window, where a large thrush had found a worm on the lawn, then sat down beside her husband. He took her hand as she spoke. “You’re probably thinking it seems like an odd combination,” she said. “But Neil was the first man not to treat me like a complete moron because of my looks. It’s difficult being… well, you know, looking like I did. Most men are either too scared to approach you or they think you must be an easy lay. With Neil, it was neither.”

“How long were you together?”

“About five years. Luke was only two when Neil walked out on us. Just like that. No warning. He said he needed his solitude and couldn’t afford to be burdened with a family any longer. That’s exactly the way he put it: Burdened.”

“I’m sorry,” said Annie. “What happened? What about your career?”

“I was twenty-five when we met, and I’d been modeling since I was fourteen. It was hard to get my figure back after Luke, of course, and I was never quite the same as before, but I still got work, mostly TV commercials, a small and very forgettable part in a slasher film, part fifteen of some series or other. But why do you need to know all this? It can’t have anything to do with Luke’s disappearance. Neil’s been dead for twelve years.”

“I agree with my wife,” said Martin. “As I said earlier, I can’t see what relevance all this has.”

“I’m just trying to get as much background as I can,” Annie explained. “You never know what might be important with missing persons, what might trigger them. Does Luke know who his father was?”

“Oh, yes. He doesn’t remember Neil, of course, but I told him. I thought it important not to keep secrets from him.”

“How long has he known?”

“I told him when he was twelve.”

“And before that?”

“Martin is the only father he has known.”

So for seven years, Annie calculated, Luke had accepted Martin Armitage as his true father, then his mother had dropped the bombshell about Neil Byrd. “How did he react to the news?” she asked.

“He was confused, naturally,” said Robin. “And he asked a lot of questions. But other than that… I don’t know. He didn’t talk about it much afterward.”

Annie made a couple of notes as she digested this. She thought there must be more to it than Robin let on, but perhaps not. Kids can be surprisingly resilient. And unexpectedly sensitive.

“Do you still have any contact with any of Neil Byrd’s friends or relatives?” Annie asked.

“Good Lord, no. Neil’s parents both died young – it was one of the things that haunted him – and I don’t move in those sort of circles anymore.”

“May I see Luke’s room?”

“Of course.” Robin led Annie out into the hall, up a flight of worn stone stairs to the upper floor, where she turned to the left and opened the heavy oak door of the second room along.

Annie turned on the bedside light. It took her a few moments to register that the room was black except for the carpeted floor. It faced north, so it didn’t get a lot of sun, and even with the bedside light on – there was no ceiling light – it looked gloomy. It was tidier than she had expected, though, and almost Spartan in its contents.

Luke, or someone, had painted a solar system and stars on the ceiling. One wall was covered with posters of rock stars, and moving closer, Annie noted the names: Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Ian Curtis, Jim Morrison. Most of them were at least vaguely familiar to her, but she thought Banks might know more about them than she did. No sports personalities, she noticed. On the opposite wall, written in silver spray paint, were the words “Le Poëte se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.” The words rang a bell, but she couldn’t quite place them, and her French wasn’t good enough to provide her with a clear translation. “Do you know what this means?” she asked.

“Sorry,” said Robin. “I never was any good at French in school.”

Annie copied the words down in her notebook. An electric guitar stood propped against a small amplifier under the mullioned window, a computer sat on a desk, and next to the wardrobe were a mini stereo system and a stack of CDs. She opened the violin case on top of the dresser and saw that it did, indeed, contain a violin.

Annie flipped through the CDs. Most of the bands she’d never heard of, such as Incubus, System of a Down and Slipknot, but she recognized some oldies like Nirvana and R.E.M. There was even some old Bob Dylan. Though Annie knew virtually nothing about the musical tastes of fifteen-year-old boys, she was certain they didn’t usually include Bob Dylan.

There was nothing by Neil Byrd. Again, Annie wished Banks were here; he’d be able to read something into all this. The last CD she had bought consisted of chants by Tibetan monks, to help with her yoga and meditation.

Annie glanced at the contents of the bookcase: A lot of novels, including Sons and Lovers, Catcher in the Rye and Le Grand Meaulnes, alongside the more traditional adolescent fare of Philip Pullman and short story collections by Ray Bradbury and H. P. Lovecraft, a number of poetry anthologies, an oversize book on Pre-Raphaelite art, and that was about it.

Other than that, the room revealed remarkably little. There was no address book, at least none that Annie could find, and not very much of anything except the books, clothes and CDs. Robin told her that Luke carried a battered leather shoulder bag around with him, wouldn’t go anywhere without it, and anything important to him would be in there, including his ultra-light laptop.

Annie did find some printed manuscripts in a drawer, short stories and poems, the most recent of which was dated a year ago, and she asked if she could borrow them to look at later. She could tell that Robin wasn’t keen; mostly, it seemed, for the sake of Luke’s precious privacy, but again, a little prodding in the right direction worked wonders. She didn’t think the creative work would tell her much, anyway, but it might give her some insight into Luke’s character.

There was nothing more to be gained from staying up there, and the black walls were beginning to oppress her, so she told Robin she had finished. They went back downstairs, where Martin Armitage was still sitting on the sofa.

“I understand you sent Luke to Eastvale Comprehensive instead of a public school, like Braughtmore,” Annie said.

“We don’t believe in public schools,” said Martin, his West Yorkshire accent getting thicker as he spoke. “They’re just breeding grounds for effete civil servants. There’s nothing wrong with a comprehensive-school education.” Then he paused and smiled. Annie got the impression it was a gesture that had worked for him often with the media, the sudden flow of charm turned on like an electric current. “Well, maybe there’s a lot wrong with it – at least that’s what I keep hearing – but it was good enough for me, and it’s good enough for most kids. Luke’s intelligent and hardworking. He’ll do fine.”

Judging from her body language – the folded arms and lips pressed together – Annie surmised that Robin didn’t agree, that Luke’s education had been a matter of some heated discussion.

“Is he happy at school?” she asked.

“He’s never complained,” said Martin. “No more than any kid would. You know, he doesn’t like his geography teacher, doesn’t like games, and algebra’s too hard. That sort of thing.”

“He’s not a sports fan?”

“Unfortunately, no,” said Martin. “I’ve tried to get him interested, but…” He shrugged.

“What about the other boys at school? Even if he is, as you say, a bit of a loner, he must have some contact with his classmates?”

“I suppose so, but I’ve never seen any evidence of it.”

“He’s never brought friends to the house?”

“Never.”

“Or asked permission to visit their houses?”

“No.”

“Does he go out a lot?”

“No more than any other boy his age,” said Martin. “Maybe even less.”

“We want Luke to have a normal life,” said Robin. “It’s hard knowing what to allow and what not to. It’s hard to know how much discipline to apply. If you don’t give enough, then the child runs wild, and the parents get the blame. If you keep too strict control, he doesn’t develop naturally, and he blames you for screwing him up. We do our best to be good parents and strike a fair balance.”

Annie, an outsider herself at school because she was brought up in an artists’ commune, the “hippie chick” to the other kids, understood just how alienated Luke might feel, not through any fault of his parents. For a start, they lived in an out-of-the-way place like Swainsdale Hall, a grand place at that; secondly, they were minor celebrities; and thirdly, he sounded like an introverted personality anyway.

“I’m sure you do,” she said. “What did he do yesterday?” she asked.

“He went into the town center.”

“How did he get there?”

“Bus. There’s a good service, at least until after teatime.”

“Did he have any particular reason to go to Eastvale yesterday?”

“Nothing in particular,” Robin answered. “He just loves hunting for secondhand books, and he wanted to look at some new computer stuff.”

“That’s all?”

“As far as I know. It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Has he ever stopped out all night before?”

“No,” said Robin, putting her hand to her throat. “Never. That’s why we’re so worried. He wouldn’t put us through this unless something… something awful’s happened.”

She started to cry, and her husband held her, smoothing her silky spun-gold hair. “There, there, darling. Don’t worry. They’ll find him.” All the time his intense eyes were looking right at Annie, as if daring her to disagree. Not that she wanted to. A man used to having his own way. A man of action, too, Annie had no doubt, used to running ahead with the ball and slamming it into the back of the net.

“What about the rest of the family – uncles, aunts, grandparents?” she asked. “Was he close to anybody in particular?”

“Robin’s family’s down in Devon,” said Martin. “My parents are dead, but I’ve got a married sister living in Dorset and a brother in Cardiff. Of course, we rang everyone we could think of, but nobody’s seen him.”

“Did he have any money with him?”

“Not much. A few pounds. Look, Inspector,” he said, “I do appreciate your questions, but you’re on the wrong track. Luke has his mobile. If he wanted to go somewhere or do something that meant he wouldn’t be coming home, or that he’d be late, then why wouldn’t he give us a buzz?”

“Unless it was something he didn’t want you to know about.”

“But he’s only fifteen,” said Martin. “What on earth could he be up to that’s so secret he wouldn’t want his parents to know about it?”

Do you know where your children are? Do you know what your children are doing? It was Annie’s experience, both through her own memories and as a policewoman, that there was no one more secretive than an adolescent, especially a sensitive, lonely adolescent, but Luke’s parents just didn’t seem to get this. Hadn’t they been through it themselves? Or had so much else happened since their own childhoods that they had forgotten what it was like?

There were any number of reasons why Luke might have thought it necessary to go off for a while without telling his parents – children are often selfish and inconsiderate – but they couldn’t seem to think of one. Still, it wasn’t the first time Annie had come across such an astonishing gap between parental perception and reality. More often than she would have expected, she had found herself facing the parents of missing children who said they had simply no idea where young Sally could have gone or why she would want to go off anywhere and cause them such pain.

“Have there ever been any threats against you?” she asked.

“No,” said Martin. “Why do you ask?”

“Celebrities often attract the wrong sort of attention.”

Martin snorted. “We’re hardly Beckham and Posh Spice. We’re not much in the public eye these days. Not for the past five years or so, since we moved here. We both keep a very low profile.”

“Did it cross your mind that someone might have thought Luke was worth kidnapping?” she asked.

“Despite what you think,” Martin said, “we’re actually not all that wealthy.” He gestured around. “The house, for a start… it just eats up money. We’d be very poor marks for a kidnapper, believe me.”

“The kidnapper might not know that.”

Robin and Martin looked at each other. Finally, Robin spoke. “No, I don’t think so. As I said, we always wanted Luke to have a normal life, not like mine. We didn’t want him surrounded by bodyguards and security. Maybe it was foolish of us, unrealistic, but it’s worked until now. Nothing bad ever happened to him.”

“And I’m sure nothing has now,” said Annie. “Look, I realize it’s probably second nature to you, but if anyone from the press comes around asking questions-”

“Don’t worry,” said Martin Armitage. “They’ll have me to deal with.”

“Very good, sir. And just to be on the safe side, do you think we could arrange to have any phone calls intercepted?”

“But why?” asked Robin.

“In case of ransom demands.”

She put her hand to her cheek. “But surely you don’t think…?”

“It’s just a precaution.”

“It’s an unlisted number,” Martin said.

“Even so.”

He held Annie’s gaze for a few beats before nodding. “Very well. If you must.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll arrange for the technician to drop by later this morning. Do you have a business office?”

“No,” said Martin. “Not at the moment.”

“You don’t have a business number?”

“No.” He paused, then went on as if he’d sensed an implied slight in Annie’s tone or manner. “Look, I might have been just a football player, but that doesn’t mean I’m thick, you know.”

“I didn’t-”

“I got my A-Levels, went to Leeds Polytechnic, as it was back then, and got a business diploma.”

So what did that make him? Annie wondered, unimpressed: the “thinking woman’s crumpet”? “I didn’t mean to imply anything,” she went on. “I’m simply trying to make sure we’ve got every eventuality covered.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin said. “It’s been a stressful night. It’s just, well, being who we are, Robin and I get that sort of thing a lot. People tend to patronize us.”

“I understand,” said Annie, standing up to leave. “I won’t keep you any longer.” She passed her card over to Robin, who was closest. “My mobile number’s on there, too.” She smiled and added, “When you can reach it.” Cell-phone coverage was spotty in the Dales, to say the least. “If you do hear anything at all, you won’t hesitate to call me, will you?”

“No,” said Robin. “Of course not. And if…”

“You’ll be the first to hear. Don’t worry, we’ll be looking for him, I can assure you. We’re really very good at this sort of thing.”

“If there’s anything I can do…” said Martin.

“Of course.” Annie gave them her best, most confident smile and left, not feeling confident at all.