Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The Lost Boy by Robert Barnard

Robert Barnard is the winner of the 2003 Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement. This highest honor in British crime writing goes to an author who has already won the American Nero Wolfe, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards, and has received eight nominations for the Edgar. We present a Barnard novella this time. The author’s latest novel is The Mistress of Alderley (Scribner; 4/03).

The young man in jeans and chunky pullover walked out of the sportswear shop into the broad upper walk of the shopping precinct, his little boy riding high on his shoulders.

“Where to now, Captain?” he asked. “What’s the menu: Coke, ice cream, or lemonade?”

The child’s eyes sparkled, but he thought long and seriously and when at last he said, “Lemonade, Daddy,” the man wondered whether he said it because it was the last option mentioned. Often his apparent pondering was really the sign of his general thoughtfulness.

“Okay, well, we’ll go to the ice-cream stall downstairs, shall we? They have drinks as well there, so you can make up your mind finally when you get there.”

“Yes!” said the little boy enthusiastically.

They made an attractive sight as they took the escalator down to the lower floor of the shopping precinct, the little boy glorying in his wondrous elevation above really grown-up people, crowing down on them and drawing their attention. The man was about twenty-five, casual altogether, but his jeans were clean and above the neck of the pullover could be seen the bright check of his shirt. The face would not have attracted a second look, but when it did, the passerby would have noted light brown hair cut short around a long, thoughtful face.

“Here we are, Captain,” he said as they arrived at the ice-cream stall on the ground level. “Now, take a good look and tell me what it is you’d like.”

“What a lovely little boy,” said a middle-aged woman, joining the queue behind them.

“Malcolm?” responded the man softly, his hand ruffling the hair of the boy, now on the ground and staring through the side glass of the stall. “He’s a cracker. But we don’t tell him.”

They looked at him. He was oblivious to their conversation, single-mindedly surveying the range of desirables on offer.

“Take your time, Captain,” the man said.

“He’s got a good father, that’s for sure,” said the woman, half in love with the man’s youth and healthy look. “These days men pretend they’re shouldering half the burden, but really they leave most of it to the mother as they always did.”

“He’s everything to me,” said the young man simply. “He’s what makes life worth living. We’ll be phoning his mother in a while, to tell her we’re both all right.”

“Oh — don’t you come from here?”

“No, we’re not from these parts.”

“I want the red one,” said the little boy, pointing to a bright pink bowl of ice cream.

“The red one, right. I think that’s cherry, not strawberry.”

“Sherry. I want the sherry one.”

So the cherry one it was. The man paid for a double scoop of ice cream, refused one for himself, and when he’d paid over the money he nodded to the woman and led the boy by the left hand out of the St. James’s Mall and into early spring sunlight. The boy walked confidently, his hand in the man’s, while the other one held the cornet, which he was licking enthusiastically.

“Don’t they make a lovely picture?” said the middle-aged woman wistfully to the girl behind the counter of the stall. The girl looked as if she had seen enough children in her job to last her a lifetime.

“Now then, Captain,” said the man, his little boy’s hand still warmly in his as they waited on the pavement, then crossed the Headrow and started down towards Boar Lane. “We’ll go to the station and phone your mother to tell her we’re all right, and then we’ll go to the car and find a bed for the night.”

Malcolm nodded wisely, and went on licking his ice cream with intense concentration. It lasted him most of the way to Boar Lane, and when it was done he needed his fingers and his chin wiped with a handkerchief.

“Want to ride on my shoulders again?”

“Yes!” It was said with the intensity Malcolm reserved for everything he felt most deeply or enthusiastically about. The man took him under the armpits and swung him up. They crossed Boar Lane towards the Yates Wine Bar, then took the side road to the station.

“Now then, Malcolm,” the man said, “I think the telephones are through there near the ticket office.”

The boy was taking in the large square concourse and the train departure board, his eyes wide. After a second he nodded. They went through to the booking hall, the man bending his knees to get through the door, the child on his shoulders crowing triumphantly. They found a telephone, and the man brought Malcolm down from his point of vantage to sit in the crook of his arm beside the telephone.

“Now, we put some money in... That’s it. Let’s see: 01325. Then 274658... Here we are. It’s ringing. Now then, Captain: your call to Mummy.”

The phone had been picked up at the other end.

“274658.” The voice sounded strained.

“Mummy!”

“Malcolm! Where are you? What—?”

But already the man’s strong forefinger had come down on the telephone’s cradle.

“There we are, Captain. Mustn’t take up too much of Mummy’s time.”

“I’m getting desperate,” said Selena Randall.

Her solicitor, Derek Mitcham, looked at her hands, tugging and tearing at a tiny handkerchief, and could only agree. He had found, though, with desperate clients, that the best thing to do was to keep the tone low and level.

“Everyone’s doing everything they can,” he said.

The woman’s voice rose dangerously.

“Are they? Are they? It doesn’t look like that to me, I can tell you. The police, for example. What are they doing, actually doing? I can’t see that they’re doing anything.”

“You can be quite sure that police forces all over the country have a description of your husband, and of Malcolm. They’ll all be on the lookout for them.”

In this case the measured tone did not seem to be working.

“But what about publicity? If there was a hue and cry, a proper campaign with publicity in the media, everyone in the country would be looking for them. Carol Parker is everywhere, appealing to people who see her little boy and his father — in all the tabloids, and on daytime television, too.”

Mr. Mitcham sighed. He knew Mrs. Randall was not avid for publicity, only anxious to do everything needed to get her son back. But she must give people who knew her less well a very poor impression, and though he had tried to get the message across to her, this still came up at every meeting they had. He tried again.

“Mrs. Parker’s husband is German, and he has a history of mental instability. The police are afraid he may take the little boy out of the country, or even harm him wittingly or unwittingly. You must see that your husband is a quite different matter. Children are taken quite frequently by the parent who does not have custody. Usually there is no question of their being in any danger.”

He spoke quietly and distinctly, and now it seemed to work. Selena nodded, taking in, at least for the moment, his argument.

“Oh, I know Dick wouldn’t harm Malcolm. He loves him to bits... But the fact that he’s English doesn’t mean he won’t take him out of the country.”

“You can be sure the police at ports and airports will be especially on the alert.”

“These days you can drive through the channel tunnel and no one gives you a second glance.”

“That’s not true, Mrs. Randall.”

She looked down at the ruin of her handkerchief.

“I don’t think anybody cares. They just think ‘the little boy is bound to be all right,’ and don’t give it another thought.”

“Well, that is something that must be a comfort for you.”

“But what about me? I had custody of him, and I haven’t seen him for nearly ten weeks.” Her eyes filled with tears and she began dabbing them with the ragged bits of hankie. “Do you know what I fear? I am afraid he’ll forget me, as a young child like Malcolm is bound to do quite soon. But most of all, I’m afraid I’ll forget him. What he sounds like, how he laughs, what it feels like to touch him, have him in my arms.” She looked up at Mr. Mitcham, wild-eyed. “I’m afraid if I get him back he’ll be a stranger.”

“I’m sure you won’t forget a thing about him. No mother would.”

“Don’t be so bloody sentimental! How would you know?... sorry.” She resumed tugging at the handkerchief. “You said everyone would be on the lookout for Dick and Malcolm, but what is there to be on the lookout for? Dick is nice-enough-looking, but there’s nothing to distinguish him from thousands of other quite nice-looking young men. Hair colour — that’s about the only thing to mark him off: light brown, so that rules out people with black or blond hair. Not much, is it? There’s still less with Malcolm.”

“They have a photograph.”

“I wish it was a better photograph...” She returned obsessively to her theme. “Dick has quite an arrogant look sometimes. Raises his chin and looks out at the world as if he thinks he’s a lot better than other people. I don’t suppose?... No. It’s just impression, isn’t it, not fact. It’s fact you need. Little Anton Parker has a mole on his hip. Malcolm has nothing. She can just pull his pants down and check, whereas I’ll have nothing, if I ever see him again. Can you believe it? Nothing to distinguish him from thousands and thousands of other boys of his age... Sometimes I think it’s hopeless. Sometimes I think I might just as well give up.”

“I know you’re not serious about that, Mrs. Randall.”

“No... It’s just a mood. I’ll never give up.”

“Nor should you.”

“I sometimes wonder whether Dick won’t come back of his own accord and we can all three be together like we used to be.”

“I don’t think you should bank on that. But there is going to come a crunch point, and it might come soon. He can’t go on running forever. Where did he ring you from?”

“From Leeds. I can’t believe Dick would be so cruel. Just one word...”

“The last sighting we had of them that was pretty firm was North Wales. Eventually he’s going to run out of money.”

There was a pause. Then Mr. Mitcham saw Selena Randall’s shoulders stiffen as she made a decision.

“I don’t think he will.”

“Why not? What do you mean?” He saw the shoulders slacken slightly and he said urgently: “Tell me.”

Then it all came out. When she had told her tale, he asked her, already knowing the answer, “Have you told the police this?”

“No. I thought it might get Dick into trouble.”

This time Mr. Mitcham’s sigh was audible. Sometimes he despaired of fathoming the mysteries of people’s hearts.

At the cash desk of The Merry Cook, Dick Randall asked if they had a room vacant. The chain of roadside eateries had at some of their establishments a few overnight rooms — inexpensive, simple, anonymous. It was their anonymity that appealed, because it seemed to spread to the rooms’ users. He had a name thought up if he had been asked for one: Tony Wilmslow. He enjoyed thinking up names while he was driving, and sometimes thought he could people a whole novel with the characters he’d invented — though of course it would be an all-male novel, and the idea of that didn’t appeal to him. The girl behind the counter nodded, rang up GBP32.50 on the till, and handed over a key when he paid in cash. Dick’s credit card had been unused since he had snatched Malcolm from the front garden of the house he had once shared with his wife.

“Number three,” said the girl, then turned her eyes to the next customer in the line, totting up the price of the plates and polystyrene cup on her tray.

I’m not even thought worthy of a second glance, thought Dick wryly, but with an underlying satisfaction. He went out to the car where Malcolm was still strapped in and parked it outside number three.

“Home for the night,” he said. “Come along, Captain.”

They’d eaten at midday, so they had no use of the cheap and cheerful meals at The Merry Cook. Dick took from the backseat a slice of cold pizza in a plastic bag — something left over from Malcolm’s lunch — and a carton of milk. For himself he had bought a sandwich. He never ate much when he had something on, though he was one of those people who burned up calories and never was other than slim. Still, eating made him feel bulkier.

They ate companionably on the bed, then played the cat’s cradle game Dick had himself always loved when a child, and had taught his son. Malcolm could undress himself for bed, and loved to do it, his face always rapt with concentration. Dick sat him on the lavatory, then chose one of the five or six stories Malcolm always insisted on when he was being read to sleep.

“Remember,” Dick said, as he always did, “if you wake in the night and I’m not here, I won’t be far away, and I’ll soon be back. Just turn over and go to sleep again.”

Malcolm nodded, and lay there waiting for Postman Pat. Dick wished he could wean him on to a wider choice of stories, but thought that familiarity must be settling to a child’s mind at a time when so much of what he was experiencing was unfamiliar. After a page or so, the little head nodded. Dick turned off the light, then lay on the bed beside him, fully clothed.

Dick had marked out the bungalow as they’d driven through the March darkness on the approaches to The Merry Cook. Old, substantial, without alarm, and with token lights obviously switched on by a neighbour. At shortly before midnight, Malcolm sleeping soundly, Dick got carefully off the bed, took the gloves and torch from the little bedside table where he’d left them, collected his old canvas bag from the spindly armchair, and then slipped out of the motel room.

There was no need to take the car. Dick was only interested in portable property. He had a nose for houses inhabited by the sort of people who would have accumulated it. He had a wonderful sense, too, of street geography, acquired during his teenage years: He always knew the best approach to a place, and still better the whole range of possible escape routes. There was no point in subtlety in the approach to number 41 Sheepscar Road, but as he padded along he renewed in the darkness the possible ways of making a quick exit from the area. The lights in the bungalow had been switched off by the obliging neighbour. All the adjacent house lights were off. Once inside the garden he waited in the darkness at the side of the house to make sure he had not been heard or observed. When no lights went on or sounds were heard, he let himself in through the front door with the ease of practice. Where you could use a credit card to do it you knew you were dealing with very unworldly owners.

Which everything in the house pointed to. The jewel box was by the dressing-room table in the main bedroom, and yielded modest to good pickings. The inevitable stash of notes under the mattress amounted, his experienced grasp of the bundle told him, to something in the region of two hundred pounds. The sideboard drawer revealed silver cutlery of good quality and an antique candle-snuffer which he suspected was something special. All went into the overnight bag after a torchlight inspection, as did an Art Deco vase in the centre of the dining table. He was out of the house in ten minutes. The rooms he left were to all intents and purposes so similar to their state when he came in that the neighbour would probably not notice that there had been an intruder.

He was back in the little bedroom with Malcolm half an hour after he had left him. As he undressed, the boy stirred in his sleep. Dick got in beside him and cuddled him close. Their future seemed assured for the next week or so.

Inspector Purley looked at Selena Randall with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. He had always had the feeling that she was holding out on him, either deliberately or unconsciously. In fact, he’d pressed her on this in previous talks they’d had, and she had denied it, but in a way that never quite did away with his suspicion. Now it was going to come out.

“You say there’s something about your husband that you’ve been keeping from us?” he said.

He flustered her further.

“Well, not keeping from you. Just not telling you because I didn’t think it was relevant. And I didn’t want to hurt Dick, because I always thought — or hoped, anyway — that one day he’d come back and everything would be as it used to be. That’s what I really wanted... You see, this could really harm him...”

“Yes. Go on.”

“He... When I met him, six years ago, he was an accomplished thief. A house burglar.”

Inspector Purley bit back any annoyance.

“But he’s got no record. We checked.”

“No. I said he was very accomplished. He was never caught... You do see why I didn’t tell you, don’t you? I mean, if he was to be caught with Malcolm, it wouldn’t be just the abduction, would it?”

She looked at him, tearfully appealing. Inspector Purley sighed. The story had changed in seconds from not thinking it relevant to not wanting to land her husband with an even longer prison sentence than he’d get anyway.

“Do you know, Mrs. Randall, I think it’s time you made up your mind.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“You really have to sort out your priorities. Is your first priority getting your little boy back?”

“Yes. Of course it is.”

“Then you’ve got to tell us everything that might be relevant to finding him and your husband. Everything.”

“Yes... It’s just that I’ve never felt bitter towards Dick. I loved him when I married him, and I still love him. I can’t believe he’d be so cruel as to let me hear Malcolm’s voice on the phone and then cut us off after only a single word. It’s like he’s become another person.”

Inspector Purley thought that might be because he was afraid Malcolm would let slip something that could be of use to the police, but he was not in the business of trying to make her think more kindly of her husband. That was the whole problem.

“That’s really cruel,” he agreed. “Now, about these burglaries: What kind of detail can you give me about them? Your husband isn’t on our computer, but the burglaries will be.”

She looked at him wide-eyed.

“I don’t know any details. I only know he was doing them. That’s how he dressed so well, ran a car, did the clubs, and ate at good restaurants. When I found out, of course, I made him stop. That was a condition of our getting engaged. My father got him a job with a business associate. For a time he did very well. He learned quickly, and Dick always had charm. People warmed to him, looked on him as a friend. He was under-manager of the Garrick Hotel in Darlington when the group merged with a larger one, and there were redundancies... That was when things started to go wrong.”

“Did he go back to his old ways?”

“No! But he hated being so hard up, and when I got a job he hated being dependent on me.”

Inspector Purley considered the matter.

“So how long ago were these burglaries he did?”

“About five years ago — that’s when he stopped. But he’d been doing them for years, since he left school.”

“And he’s how old now?”

“Twenty-six.”

“What can you tell us about the burglaries? Surely there must be something about them that sticks in your mind, or one particular job he told you about that stood out?”

“No, there’s not. I never knew anything about them. I refused to listen.”

She was pulling back, Inspector Purley thought. She needed to be given a further push to remind her what was at stake.

“He must have been good,” he said admiringly, “never to have been caught. Didn’t he ever boast? Say what it was that made him so good?”

“Well...” She was reluctant, but was being borne along by the tide. “He always said the secret wasn’t the technical things, how to break and enter — though he was good at that, too. He said that what mattered was a good eye.”

The inspector digested this.

“For what? For stuff that would fetch a tidy sum? Or for an easy target, a likely victim?”

“The last. He always said the best target was a retired couple or a widowed person, someone who had built up a bit of property and was now pottering along.” She was putting it more politely than Richard usually had, but suddenly she put aside her protectiveness again. “ ‘Someone who had done quite nicely for himself and was now coasting towards his dotage’ — that’s how he described it once. He only said things like that when he was trying to get my goat.”

“I see,” commented the inspector drily. “He has a nice way with words, your husband. Or a nasty one.”

But privately he was pleased to have had contact with the man through his own words. They sounded very adolescent, and he wondered how much of the daredevil boy was in the man still. But most of all he hoped that her willingness to quote her husband’s words and show him in an unfavourable light meant that Selena Randall had turned a corner.

“Dick would never hurt Malcolm,” said Selena, dashing his hopes. “I’ve got to believe that. He loves him more than anyone in the world. That’s why I don’t want to hurt him.”

Inspector Purley reserved judgment. He hoped for her sake and the little boy’s that what she said about her husband was true.

Dick Randall came out of the little back-street jeweller’s with a spring in his step. The man had not hidden his appreciation of the brooch’s value, had commented on the workmanship and the quality of the stones, and had offered Dick a very fair price. He was an honest man, and it had been a pleasure to do business with such a person.

Malcolm was still strapped into his seat in the little car park round the corner. It always gave Dick a lift of the heart to see him again. He was solemnly watching a Dalmatian dog in the next car, which was in its turn watching a lazy car-park cat. It struck Dick how lucky he was that Malcolm was the sort of child who could be left on his own for fifteen or twenty minutes, without danger of panic fits or grizzling. He was solemn, watchful, and even, in his childish way, self-confident. Perhaps it was because he had had to be.

“Here I am, Captain,” he said, opening his car door and sliding himself into the driver’s seat. “A nice little bit of business, very satisfactorily concluded.”

He was talking to himself rather than the child, but as usual Malcolm took him up.

“What’s bizniz?”

“Business?” he said, starting the car and thinking how he could explain business to a three-year-old. “Well, let’s see. Business can be something you’ve got that someone wants and is willing to pay for. Or it may be some skill or ability that you have that the other man hasn’t got, and he’ll pay you to use that skill for him. Or it may be a sort of swap: Do this for me, and I’ll do that for you.”

He’d tried hard to make it simple, but he knew he was still talking as much to himself as to the child. He often did this, having no one but a child to talk to. Malcolm is going to grow up too quickly, he thought, unless I can settle him down somewhere where he can make friends and lead a normal child’s life.

“So did you have something that the man you went to see wanted?” Malcolm asked after digesting his words.

“That’s right, I did. And it means we can eat for a fortnight,” said Dick.

“What would we do if we didn’t have the money to buy food?”

“Oh, but we always will. That I can promise you, Malcolm. It’s what daddies are for — getting money so that you can have food and clothes and a bed for the night.”

After a moment Malcolm nodded, seemingly satisfied, and then went off into a light doze. Dick drove on southwards, at a moderate speed.

They stopped for lunch in Grantham. Dick tried to give the little boy a balanced diet, but today, buoyed by the notes bursting the seams of his wallet, he said: “Today you can have just anything you want, Captain.”

They found a side-street cafe that looked cosy. Malcolm chose chicken nuggets and chips, and Dick had the day’s special: roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. The cafe’s owner cooed over Malcolm, but knew better than to ask where his Mummy was: All too often you got a sad tale of marriage breakup. Men alone with children these days usually meant they were using quality time graciously allowed them by the Child Support Agency. Malcolm had a slice of chocolate gateau for afters, and Dick cleaned him up in the lavatories before going up to the counter, buying some sandwiches and buns for their evening meal, and settling up for everything. When they emerged into the bright afternoon sunlight he felt like a million dollars.

The little jeweller’s shop was nearly opposite the cafe.

“Do you know, Malcolm, I feel it’s my lucky day,” said Dick.

He led the child by the hand the hundred or so yards down the street to where his car was parked. He opened the boot and began to rummage in the canvas bag. Malcolm, standing beside him on the pavement, regarded him wide-eyed: The bag, for him, was beginning to assume the mystic standing of a cornucopia, source of endless goodies.

“Have you got something the man will want?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Dick, finally selecting a rather showy diamond ring. “Now, I’ll only be five minutes or so, Captain, and then we can be on our way. So you can just sit in your car seat and watch the world go by.”

He strapped him in and walked whistling back down the street, the ring wrapped in tissue paper in his trouser pocket. The door of the jeweller’s shop opened with an old-fashioned ring.

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

The words were old-fashioned and welcoming, the face less so. There was a suspicion of midnight shadow over the jowls, the eyes were calculating, the mouth mean. Dick nearly turned round there and then, but he had no desire to draw attention to himself needlessly. There seemed to be no alternative but to plunge in.

“I wondered whether you’d be interested in this.”

He drew from his pocket the little package and unwrapped it. The central diamond sparkled dangerously, and the rubies of the surround smouldered. The ring was already beginning to seem ill-omened in his eyes. The man behind the counter took it noncommittally.

“Hmm. A rather assertive piece. Not really Grantham. However, I do have one customer who might... and there’s a dealer I do business with who sometimes takes this sort of thing...” The tone seemed to Dick professionally disparaging. “I’ll just take it into the back, sir, with your permission, and get a better look at the stones.”

Dick nodded. The man disappeared through the glass door behind the counter and Dick saw him go behind a little booth in the back room, where he imagined a microscope was set up. He waited, glancing nonchalantly at the rings and pendants on the trays under the counter, and the jewelled clocks and ornaments on the glassed-in shelves behind it.

Suddenly the jeweller’s head appeared above the walls of the booth. Dick forced himself to seem to be looking at something else. The man had a telephone at his ear, and he was looking at Dick. When his head disappeared down into the booth again, Dick turned and wrenched open the door.

The shop bell rang.

He began running. In seconds, he was wrenching open the driver’s door, had his key in the ignition, and was scorching off down the street. In his mirror he could see the jeweller in the door of his shop. This was probably the most exciting thing to happen in his mean little life for years, Dick thought. Not too fast. Don’t draw attention. Get onto the motorway and then open up.

“Didn’t he want what you had for him?” Malcolm asked.

“Oh, he wanted it,” said Dick. “I’m driving fast because I’m excited and pleased.”

That night they spent one of their rare nights in the car. Dick had put about a hundred and fifty miles between him and the Grantham police, then had gone off the motorway and cruised around some little Southern English towns and villages. Somehow he felt all shaken up, and he blamed himself bitterly. He would never indulge in childish superstition again. My lucky day, my foot! Like some toothless old granny reading her horoscope! He hadn’t had a worse one since the day he snatched Malcolm. He just couldn’t face the lies and the performance he always put on at bed-and-breakfast places, nor going back onto the motorway to find a Merry Cook with rooms attached. There was also the matter of organising new number-plates for the car. He didn’t think the man could have seen his — themselves acquired from an abandoned car in Gateshead — but he wasn’t taking any risks.

“Do you mind, Captain?” he asked Malcolm. “I don’t think there’s any places round here that take in guests.”

“No, I don’t mind. I like it,” said Malcolm stoutly. “But I’ll need to go to the toilet.”

He needed more than that. They found a little coppice just outside a village called Birley, and Dick drove up the lane that bisected the trees and found a little open area between it and a field. They ate the sandwiches and the buns they’d bought at midday, and Malcolm drank a bottle of pop. That did it. He had to leave the car quickly and be sick under a tree.

“Not very sick,” he said, accurately enough.

Then he was ready to sleep.

Dick dozed. He found it difficult to get proper sleep on the rare occasions that they slept in the car. In the middle of the night he slipped out and acquired new number-plates in Birley — he couldn’t find an abandoned car, but he took the plates off the oldest car he could find parked in the road. When he got back to his own car he spread himself over the two front seats and tried to sleep again. Sleep was very slow in coming, but when it did, it brought The Dream again. The Nightmare.

He dreamt he was driving away from a small town, out onto the wider road, Malcolm beside him, excited and chattering. All was well, wonderfully well, and they were laughing together, making silly jokes, and full of joy in each other’s company, as ever.

Then, in his mirror, he saw at a distance a police car. It couldn’t... No, of course it couldn’t. Why should he assume they were after him? But he increased his speed a little. Then, with the special tempo of a dream, things began to take on the excitement of a car chase in a film. The police car increased its speed, too — not by very much, but enough to make sure they would catch up with him before long. Dick in his dream was much less cool than the Dick in real life. He could think of nothing else to do but increase his speed again. The police car did the same. “I’ve got to do something,” Dick said to himself. “I’ve got to do something that shakes them off.”

The road stretched straight ahead, but there was an intersection approaching. Dick swerved off onto a winding country road. On the left, though, was a wood, and seeing a lane into it Dick swerved aside again and went into it. Please God the police would go on. The road had been dry and there were no tire marks. But he kept up a good speed. The lane was rutted, the car jolting as it coped with the new conditions. In the seat beside him, Malcolm was crowing with delight and jumping up and down. As the car ploughed ahead down the lane as fast as Dick could push it, Malcolm released his seat belt and strained forward to see.

“Malcolm, belt yourself in again!” he called.

Suddenly, ahead were trees. The end of the lane, the reassertion of thick woodland. There was space enough between two of the trees, but as he aimed at it the car no longer did what he wanted, diverted by the roughness of the terrain and the thick undergrowth. The left-hand wing bashed with a shattering shock into one of the trees, and the boy in the seat beside him hurtled forward and hit the windscreen with a thud that...

Dick woke, sweating and shuddering. He was conscious that his half-waking mind had exerted some kind of control over his sleeping one, and had prevented him from screaming or trying to reach the boy in the backseat. Stiffly he got out of the car. Trees — that was what had set it off, and the little path winding through them. He fumbled in his pocket and lit a rare cigarette. Then soberly he went about his early-morning business, fetching a screwdriver and drill and starting to change the plates. He memorised the numbers as a precaution in case he was stopped. The old plates he buried.

He shivered in the cold of the morning. In the car, Malcolm was stirring. They could be on their way.

“We can treat ourselves tonight,” he said to the little boy, who was still rubbing his eyes. “Look at the money we’ve saved.”

“Can we have breakfast soon?” said Malcolm, whose mind focussed on immediate rather than long-term prospects.

When Selena Randall had left the police station, Inspector Purley looked at DC Lackland, who had sat in on the interview.

“What did you think?”

“Still hung up on publicity, using the tabloids, getting on television, that kind of thing.”

“Yes. I don’t think I got through to her.”

“You got through while she was sitting here, but it won’t last five minutes once she gets home and is sick with worry. She’s bound to clutch at straws.”

“I know. But the case of Carol Parker is different. While there was a chance her son was in the country, there was a point to the television appeals. Frankly, the appearance Mrs. Randall saw yesterday on daytime television was useless. The woman should be in Germany, not here. That’s where the child will be by now.”

“And they’re not inviting her.”

“No. And the police there are doing bugger-all. The boy was born in Germany and as far as they’re concerned, he’s a German citizen. The father doesn’t have him now, but he’s a Catholic with family ramifications from one end of the country to another. The boy could be with any of them, and even if they found him, he wouldn’t be sent back to his mother. That’s German law, and the Common Market hasn’t changed that.”

“So really, Mrs. Randall is in a more hopeful position?”

“Yes. But try telling that to her. The main thing is, we’re pretty sure the child is still in the country. She had one of these tormenting phone calls only three days ago, from Romford. Once we get hold of the child, returning him to her will be a mere formality. If he was abroad, she’d be bogged down in the local judicial system for years.”

“On the other hand, we don’t seem to be any nearer to discovering where the two of them might be.”

“No, and that’s because they’re not anywhere. They’re everywhere, zigzagging hither and yon to create confusion. Nevertheless, the indications are that Dick Randall is a good father. I just hope she’s not fooling herself about that. If he is, he must be considering the future, facing the fact that the boy needs to be settled, have friends, go to nursery school, live in a house he recognises and relates to. If he finds somewhere and goes on with his burglaries, the local police are going to start seeing a pattern, because he’s not going to be able to go very far afield.”

DC Lackland screwed up his face sceptically.

“The police up here apparently didn’t discover a pattern when he was a teenage Raffles,” he said.

“Good point. We need to alert them to the pattern. The other thing is, the balance of sightings and traces seems to be shifting. There’s still some zigzagging — Romford was a piece of cheek, to suggest they’d gone to ground in London, but it was a rogue report. The balance is shifting southwards. Nothing in the North for over three weeks. It’s been Midlands, South, shifting westwards. I’m going to concentrate on alerting police in Devon, Dorset, Cornwall — that’s where he’s going to be found.”

“The West Country does attract a lot of drifters and oddballs,” conceded Lackland.

“Maybe. Though no more than places like Brighton and Tunbridge Wells. The West at this time of year is a good place to be anonymous in.”

“So, no television appearances for Selena Randall?”

“No... Even if other things were equal, and even if we could persuade them to slot her in, I’d be doubtful about putting her on the Esther Rantzen programme, or the Richard and Judy show.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Mrs. Parker is effective because she’s blazingly angry with her ex-husband. She hates him. It comes across white-hot to the listener.”

“Whereas Selena Randall is still half in love with hers?”

“Yes. More than half. And not only that: She still thinks of him as a good man.”

“In spite of those phone calls.”

“Yes, in spite of them. The message coming from her would be very blurred, or no message at all.” He mused, with the wisdom of the police force over the years, unalloyed by feminism, or any other — ism: “Funny things, women.”

This was a sentiment DC Lackland could agree with.

The woman who opened the door of Lane’s End, in the village of Briscow, was comfortable, attractive, and brightly dressed: a woman in her late forties, neither well-off nor on her uppers, but at ease with life and still full of it.

“Yes?” Good, broad, open smile.

“I wondered if you have a room for the night,” said Dick.

She looked at the open face, the lean figure, the little boy on his shoulders. The smile of welcome became still more warming.

“I do that,” she said. “Come on in and have a look at it.”

She led the way upstairs and pushed open a door. Two single beds pushed together, chintz as a bed covering, chintz at the windows, and the sun streaming through on the gleaming wooden furniture. It looked like heaven.

“This is wonderful,” said Dick. “Isn’t it, Malcolm?”

“Yes!” said Malcolm, already a connoisseur.

“Are there just the two of you? Is his m—” She stopped on seeing Dick give a tiny shake of the head. “Well, if you take it that will be seventeen pounds fifty a night, and I can do a proper evening meal for six pounds extra — three for the little boy.”

They closed the deal at once, there in the sunlight. Already there was a warmth between the three of them which had, in the case of the two adults, a little to do with sex, more to do with aesthetic appreciation, likeness of spirit, a feeling of some kind of reawakening. Dick had consciously begun shaping his story accordingly.

Later in the evening, after a good dinner where his own preferences had been consulted and Malcolm’s still more, Dick put the boy to bed, read him to sleep, then by invitation went downstairs to the living room for coffee.

“Will it be coffee, or would you prefer a beer?”

“Coffee, please. I can never get used to beer in cans.”

She came forward, her hand held out rather shyly.

“I’ve been silly, and haven’t told you my name. I’m Margaret Cowley — Peggy to my friends.”

“And I’m Colin Morton,” said Dick, shaking the hand warmly. “I’m sorry I had to stop you, Peggy, when you were going to ask about his mother. It’s something I’ve been trying to stop him thinking about. If he was a little older it would be different.”

They were talking in the doorway of the kitchen now, and the percolator was making baritone noises.

“It was silly of me to even think of asking. It’s not my business, and these days, with everyone’s marriage breaking down, it’s much the best plan not to ask.”

Dick shook his head. “Oh, it’s nothing like that. Malcolm’s mother died, in childbirth. We were expecting a little girl, and we knew there were complications, but somehow—”

“Oh, I am sorry.” She turned to face him. His eyes were full. “So it was a tragedy clean out of the blue?”

“If the doctors suspected anything serious, they kept it from us.”

“Poor little boy. And poor you both, of course.”

“I’m trying to put it behind us, make a fresh start.”

“New place, new life?”

“Very much so.” He had blinked his eyes free of the tears, and now smiled bravely. “Everything in the old house reminded me... and though with a little boy memories fade, still, I do try to keep his mind on other things. He’s got to look to the future, even if I find it difficult, and keep... well, rambling in my mind back to the past. Stop me if I do that.”

“Isn’t life a bitch?” Peggy Cowley’s voice held genuine bitterness. “I lost my husband a couple of years ago. Massive heart attack. He was in his late sixties, but these days that seems no age.”

“It doesn’t.” He thought to himself that she must have married a man fifteen or twenty years older than herself, and his thought showed on his face.

“Yes, he was quite a bit older,” Peggy said. “Second marriage for him. But it was a very happy one.”

“No children?”

“No. Perhaps that was why it was a happy marriage.” They both laughed, but Peggy immediately kicked herself for her tactlessness. “I don’t mean it. We’d have loved to have kiddies, but it just didn’t happen. I’d have liked to have one to lean on when he died. It would have made all the difference. And even little Malcolm: You’ll have found he keeps your mind occupied and stops you grieving too much, I’ll be bound.”

Dick nodded. He had thought himself into the situation.

“Yes, he does. But sometimes I look at him and...” Again there were tears in his eyes and he took out a handkerchief. He shook himself. “That’s what I said to stop me doing.”

“Not when you’re on your own. It will do you good.”

“And what about you? Do you have a job? Or can you make ends meet with the bed-and-breakfast trade?”

“Oh, I make ends meet and a bit better than that. I’ve got the cottage as well.”

Peggy’s intention had been to drop this information casually into the conversation, but both immediately knew what was at issue.

“You have a cottage?” Dick’s voice had an equally bogus neutrality. They didn’t look at each other, but they were intensely aware of each other.

“Yes, just a tiny place at the bottom of the garden and across the lane. It doesn’t take more than two or three unless they squeeze themselves in. Actually the last of the Easter tenants leave in a couple of days’ time. I’ve got no bookings then until the school holidays start in July.”

Dick drained his coffee, and she filled his cup. Then she sat back peaceably and watched him sipping. They needed no words. Dick had half made the decision when he saw her at the door. That was why he had given her the name which was on the false papers he had got from an old contact when he was first contemplating snatching his son. The whole of the last couple of hours had felt like a coming to rest, the thing that all the last few weeks had been leading up to.

“I’d need a job,” he said. “That’s not easy in the West Country, is it?”

“It’s possible, if you’ll take the jobs that nobody else wants,” said Peggy. Dick was doing sums.

“How much do you charge for the cottage?”

“Oh, we can work something out as far as that goes.”

“No, I don’t want you to lose out,” said Dick emphatically. “There’s no earthly reason why you should lose out financially by allowing a stranger to sponge off you.”

Though they both knew perfectly well that there was one possible reason. Sex had edged its way more explicitly to the forefront of both their minds.

“I’d give the place at a reasonable rent to anyone who’d take it and look after it in the low season,” said Peggy stoutly. “Stands to reason. It’s always better to have a place occupied, with a bit coming in for it. Empty, you’re just asking for squatters and burglars.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Dick, who knew better than most. “Where is the nearest job centre?”

“Oh, that’s way away, in Truro. You ought to look for something more local first. They’re wanting a relief barman at The Cornishman, just down the road.”

“Oh? I’ve never done bar work, but I’ve worked in hotels, so I know what’s involved and I’m pretty sure I could get the hang of it. What’s the catch?”

“It’s just lunchtime. Eleven to three. That doesn’t suit most people. Oh, and there’d be a bit of cellar work in addition.”

“I might be able to supplement it with Income Support. Keep on the lookout for other things.” Other sources of income flashed through his mind, but he resolved to use those skills only very sparingly, if he used them at all.

“Anyway,” said Peggy, getting up to clear away the cups, “I’ll just leave the thought with you. We can go and have a look at the cottage tomorrow, if you’re interested.”

“And maybe go on to The Cornishman for a pub lunch. They do food at lunchtime?”

“Of course. That would be a big part of your work. Could well be a help with feeding the two of you. A lot of food goes to waste in a place like that.”

As she washed up the cups and the dinner things in the kitchen Peggy felt a glow of satisfaction. She had gambled, and she felt pretty sure she had won. If she had not told Colin about the cottage, she might have had him and Malcolm in the house for a few days, maybe for a week. But by mentioning it, she might not have them with her, but she would have them near her for much longer than that. She’d had no doubt since clapping eyes on the pair of them that that was what she wanted.

That night, as he went up to bed, Dick said, “Better go. Malcolm may be needing me. First night in a strange place.”

Unspoken because it did not need to be voiced was the thought that there would be other nights.

Selena Randall pulled a piece of paper towards her. For days she had felt she was going mad, so completely without event had her life become. No news from the police, nothing except attempts at reassurance. No sightings, no media interest, total absence even of those terrible, tantalising phone calls, which did at least tell her where they were at the moment they were made. She had to do something. It had been nagging at her mind for some days that perhaps she should appeal to him though the press, send an open letter to him through the Daily Mail, the paper that they had always taken.

“Dear Dick,” she began. “I’m writing to tell you how much I miss you both, and how I long to have you back. It’s now nearly four months since I saw Malcolm—” Longer than Carol Parker had been without her boy, she thought resentfully, but everyone knows about her loss, and nobody knows about mine. “—and I can’t bear the thought that when I see him again he will hardly know me. I will see him again, won’t I? Please, Dick, you couldn’t be so cruel as to keep him from me forever, could you? I know you love him and will look after him. Please remember that I love him, too. There is not a day goes past, not a minute of the day, when I don’t think of him. Remember how happy we were when he was born, you and me and him. I think you loved me then — loved me too much to want me to be so unhappy now. I know I loved you.”

She paused. She wanted to add: “I love you still.” Was that wise? The policeman would say no. Was it true? She wanted to write nothing but the truth. Did she still love him, after what he had done to her? Could she?

Seized by a sense of muddle and futility, not in her situation but in herself, her own mind, her own emotions, she laid her head down on the paper and sobbed her heart out.

They went to look at the cottage next morning, after the sort of breakfast dieticians throw up their hands at.

“I never put on weight,” said Dick, munching away at his fried bread. “I expect Malcolm will be the same, after he’s got over his chubbiness.”

They looked at the boy, already tucking in messily to the toast and marmalade.

“Nothing wrong with chubbiness in a child,” said Peggy.

When they’d washed up, Peggy only allowing Dick to help under protest, they set off down the back garden, then across the lane and to the tiny cottage. The tenants were just driving off when they got there, and they shouted that they were going to have a last look at Penzance.

“I wondered whether to go on to Penzance,” said Dick, “when I was driving around looking for somewhere to stay. Somehow it seemed like the end of the road.”

“You’ve got to give up thoughts like that, Colin,” said Peggy urgently. “There’s a great wide road ahead of you.”

She didn’t notice Malcolm looking up at her. He had never heard his father called Colin before.

The cottage was tiny — “bijou,” the estate agents would probably have called it — and there was an ever-present danger of tumbling over the furniture. But it was bright and cheerful, with everything done in the same sort of taste as Peggy’s own cottage. Malcolm thought it was wonderful, particularly the strip of lawn at the back, with the apple tree. It was warm enough for him to play in just his shorts, and they watched him as he tried to make friends with a very spry gray squirrel.

“It’s ideal,” said Dick to Peggy, both of them watching him protectively to see he didn’t stray from the garden down towards the riverbank. “Sort of like a refuge.”

“Don’t think like that,” urged Peggy again.

“All right — it’s what I’ve been dreaming about since — you know. Is that positive enough for you? Now, will you let me take us all to the — what was it? — The Cornishman, and we’ll have a good pub lunch.”

They looked at each other meaningfully.

All the lunchtime regulars in the pub made them welcome for Peggy’s sake. She had herself been a regular there when her husband was alive, but had been less frequent since. She was of the generation of women that didn’t much like going into a pub on their own. They got themselves a table and settled in. Selecting the food was a big thing, because it was a good menu with plenty to appeal to a child. By the time they had made their decisions they seemed to have spoken to, or had advice from, half the customers in the Saloon Bar. When Jack, the landlord, brought the three piled-high plates to their table, Peggy said:

“You still looking for help at lunchtime, Jack?”

“I am. There’s folk that are willing, but not folk that are suitable.”

Peggy looked in Dick’s direction and winked.

“Oh aye?” said the landlord, interested. “Maybe we could have a chat later, young man, after your meal.”

And so it was arranged. The talk was businesslike and decisive: Dick would come down the next couple of nights to learn the business, get into the routine, then he’d start work proper at the weekend. Peggy would look after Malcolm in the middle of the day — “It’ll be a pleasure,” she said, though she did wonder how she’d cope with the unaccustomed situation. The money was far from wonderful, but it would be welcome. Dick only worried about how much he seemed to be putting on Peggy.

“When we’re well settled in, we’ll start looking for a play group for Malcolm,” he said.

“If it goes well, I might even start one myself,” said Peggy.

It certainly went well at The Cornishman. Dick was a good worker and a good listener, and the pub’s routines went like clockwork when he was on duty. He never mentioned his hotel training, but it showed. Jack thought he was manna from heaven and tried to press him into doing longer hours, but Dick was unwilling. The boy came first, he said, and he did. Nobody asked too much about his background. Everyone in the West Country is used to people passing through, casual temporary residents who come from heaven-knows-where and soon pass on. People knew that Dick had lost his wife, because Peggy had revealed that in conversation with a friend and it had got around. Nobody displayed curiosity beyond that.

Dick slept with Peggy the night he got the job. The mutual agreement was silent, and Peggy knew she had to go along with any conditions Dick attached to the affair. She knew already that Malcolm would always come first with Dick — and second and third as well. Dick stayed in her room for an hour or so, then went as usual to sleep beside the little boy in the two twin beds put together under the window.

The routine continued when he and Malcolm went to live and fend for themselves in the tiny cottage the other side of the back lane. The boy was used to finding himself alone at nights, and didn’t worry about it. He knew it wouldn’t be for long. Dick and Peggy developed a code between themselves. When he collected Malcolm, or when he met Peggy casually on his days off, he would say “See you soon” as they parted. That meant that he’d be up that night. Perhaps Peggy should have felt that she was being used, but she didn’t. She was happy to have her hours with Malcolm, which were working out better than she could have believed possible with her lack of experience of children. She found him an enchanting child, and she was happy to have the all-too-brief time with Dick at night. She had expected little of her widowhood, and Dick was a wonderful and unexpected bonus.

By the middle of June they were a settled thing, or felt like it. Peggy was refusing all potential summer tenants for the cottage, and had managed to transfer the first bookings she had already accepted to another landlord in the area. Her friends knew what the situation was, and accepted it. Summer would be a lovely time, she knew. It was the time of year she had always enjoyed most, especially as Briscow was that bit off the tourist map. Colin would be working, of course, but he was still resisting the offer of extra hours because he didn’t want to leave his son for most of the day. Malcolm was regaining his equilibrium, she felt, though it gave her a start one day when he said: “I haven’t spoken to Mummy for ages.” It wouldn’t be long before he forgot her, she thought.

Dick was happy, too. He knew he had landed on his feet. But always in Eden there lurked the serpent, in wait to spread his poison. Dick knew he was using Peggy — not sexually, because if anything, she was using him that way. But he knew he was getting a free childminder, lots of free meals, and he knew Peggy would be charging a lot more for the cottage if she was letting it on a weekly basis to her usual casual tourist clientele.

It irked him to be dependent — because that was what it was. It had been that that had started the rot between him and Selena. He was old-fashioned, he knew, but that was something he would never apologise for. He’d known when he planned to snatch Malcolm that his feelings for the boy were old-fashioned. And it was the same for his sense that he was becoming too dependent on Peggy.

The truth was, he could do with more money.

“It follows the pattern,” said Inspector Purley. “Retired people, away from home, poor security, a nice little haul of jewelry, cash, and small household things — nothing spectacular, but worth having. And it’s West Country.”

“What if the next one’s John o’ Groats?” asked Lackland. “That’s been the pattern so far — zigzagging all over the country.”

“Ah, but it won’t be from now on, you of little faith.”

“Seems to me you’re looking at it arse up,” countered Lackland. “You decided he was headed for the West Country, and now we’ve got a possible case there, you take it as confirmation, even though we’ve had other possible cases all over the country. Dick Randall’s not the only crook to target respectable retired people.”

He did not dent his superior officer’s complacent view of things.

“You mark my words,” Purley said. “He’s come to rest in the West Country, like all sorts of other people — artists, retired people, ageing hippies, travelling people, and all manner of rag-tag and bobtail. And having come to rest, he can’t leave little Malcolm alone for long. The cases we think he was involved in were all over the country because so were they. Now the cases will all be in the West.” He walked over and looked at a map on the wall. “This one was in a small village called Monpellon. The area includes Launceston, Bodmin, Padstow — places like that. That’s where we’ll be looking to, because that’s where the two of them will have slung their hook.”

“Well, I admire your confidence,” said Lackland, who secretly, or not so secretly, did not.

“I’m so certain I’m right that I’ll risk ridicule if he does turn up in John o’ Groats and I’ll alert the local police down there that I think that’s where he is. One more strike and he may have given himself away.”

Dick was his usual efficient and sympathetic self at lunchtime in The Cornishman, pulling pints now with the sure hand of an expert, bringing three or four laden plates at once from the kitchen into the bar and remembering who had ordered what. But at the back of his mind there was a niggling worry.

Peggy had not been quite her normal self when he had delivered Malcolm that morning, not quite the same in her manner. There hadn’t been anything that you could pin down: You couldn’t say she’d got the huff, decided she’d gone off him, was feeling she was being exploited. She was minding three or four other toddlers now — children whose mothers had got summer jobs when the holiday season had come upon them. The arrival of one of them at the door had covered over any awkwardness, but also prevented any attempt to sort things out. Dick was sure there was something: an alteration in her manner, a slight access of remoteness, even coldness.

“One chicken and chips, one roast pork, one steak-and-kidney pie, and one vegetable bake.” He had a cheerful air as he served one of the families who had once been regulars of Peggy’s, but had been found an alternative cottage this season. They were a fleshy, forceful family, and they took up their knives and forks with enthusiasm.

“Can hear you’re from the North, too,” said the wife, smiling at him in a friendly fashion.

“Me father was,” said Dick. “Or should I say ‘wor’? I can do the accent, and a bit of it has rubbed off onto me. But I come from Cambridge — and all round. I’m a bit of a rolling stone.”

“Can’t be too much of a rolling stone, now you’ve got little Malcolm to consider,” said the husband. “Champion little lad, that. We saw him when we dropped by to say hello to Peggy.”

“Champion’s the word for him,” said Dick. “I call him ‘Captain.’ Can’t remember how that started, but I certainly have to jump when he gives me orders!”

“Colin — two hamburgers and chips on the bar,” called Jack, and Dick resumed his service of the crowded and cheerful bar. He didn’t like it when people commented on his very slight Northern accent. He’d told Peggy early on that he came from Cambridge, and that was a lie he was now stuck with.

He got away from The Cornishman shortly after three, and went straight to pick Malcolm up. Peggy had got her manner under control now, and was friendly and pleasant as always. She looked him in the eye, but was — somehow, was he imagining it? — quite keen for an excuse to look away again. Yes, I am imagining it, said Dick to himself, settling Malcolm onto his shoulders to ride him piggyback to the cottage.

“See you soon, Peggy,” he called. She looked up from the floor where she was playing with one of the other children.

“Oh — yes. Good,” she said.

There is something wrong, thought Dick.

“I think this is a call you should take,” said DC Lackland, and handed the receiver over to Purley.

“DI Purley speaking.”

“Ah, now are you the man who’s in charge of the disappearance of that little boy — the one who was snatched by his father in the Darlington area?”

The voice was pure County Durham.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I’m speaking from Briscow in Cornwall.”

“Oh yes?” The heightened interest in his voice was evident.

“That’s right, but we’re from Stockton, so we read about the case in the local newspapers. There wasn’t a great deal in the national papers, was there?”

“No, there wasn’t.” It seemed as if he was being accused of not pressing for more, so he said: “The North is another country.”

“Aye, you’re right. Londoners aren’t interested in what queer folk like us get up to. They’d rather not know. Any road, we’ve been coming to Cornwall for four years on the trot up to now, but this year our cottage was taken, let to a young man and a boy.”

“Oh yes?” Purley was well trained in police neutrality but he couldn’t keep a surge of interest out of his voice.

“Nice-enough-looking fellow, and a lovely little boy. I’m probably way out of order and on the wrong lines altogether, but the little boy is called Malcolm. That was the name of the little boy who was snatched, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right. The father is Richard Randall.”

“This man is calling himself Colin Something-or-other. But the boy is Malcolm. I suppose he thought changing it would cause more problems than it would solve. If it is them.”

“This man is not a local, I take it.”

“No, no, of course not. He’s been here since early spring, I believe. And he has a slight Northern accent.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Says he got it from his father. But if you were brought up in Cambridge like he says he was, you wouldn’t have your father’s accent, would you?”

“It sounds unlikely.”

“The story is that the little boy’s mother died in childbirth. We had that from Peggy, his landlady, the woman who minds the nipper while he works at the pub.”

“Right. And Peggy’s name and address are?”

“Peggy Cowley, Lane’s End Cottage, Deacon Street, Briscow, Cornwall.”

“I’m grateful to you, very grateful.”

When he had got the man’s name and address and his Stockton address, too, Purley banged down the telephone in triumph.

“Got him!”

“You haven’t got him at all yet,” said Lackland, who enjoyed playing the spoilsport. “And Malcolm’s a common enough name.”

“I feel a pricking of my thumb,” said Purley, refusing to be dampened. “Get me Launceston police.”

“So how was your day, Captain?” asked Dick, watching Malcolm get his hands very sticky from a jam sandwich. Malcolm, as always, considered at length.

“Jemima was very naughty,” he announced.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” Jemima was one of the other children Peggy minded, and in Malcolm’s opinion she was a Bad Lot.

“She spilt her lemonade and broke the little wooden horse.”

“Good Lord, fancy poor old Peggy having to cope with a naughty little girl like that.”

“She should have smacked her but she didn’t.”

After tea, when Malcolm was absorbed in a jigsaw puzzle of Postman Pat with large but bewildering pieces, Dick said:

“I’m just popping over to Peggy’s, I think we left your pully there.”

“My pully’s in the—” Malcolm began. But his father was already out of the door.

I want this thing sorted out, thought Dick, as he crossed the lane and ran up the bank and onto Peggy’s long back lawn. It can’t wait till tonight. This sort of thing can fester. And if I can’t tell her the truth, I’ll tell her a lie. It won’t be the first time.

Dick had as great a confidence in his ability to fabricate plausible stories as he had in his eye for a robbable house.

He was about to round the side of Peggy’s cottage when he heard voices from outside the front door.

“And when did you say this man and his son took the cottage?”

“Back in March,” came Peggy’s voice, reassuringly normal. “I’d have the precise dates in my records. They stayed a couple of nights bed-and-breakfast, then took the cottage.”

“Are they still there?”

“Yes.”

“What name is the man using?”

“The man’s name is Colin Morton,” came Peggy’s voice emphatically.

“And does he say he’s divorced?” asked the young sergeant, his hard-looking face intimidating, his eyes like deep, cold lakes.

“Colin is a widower,” said Peggy firmly.

“Oh yes? And what does he say his wife died of?”

“His wife died in childbirth. Look, it’s not me you should be asking these questions, it’s him. He’ll have all the papers and things.” Thinking she heard movement from the back garden, she went on talking brightly. “But really I know that’s true. I’ve seen a picture of the poor girl with little Malcolm. Such a nice face she had, pretty but loving, too. Colin keeps that in his wallet, because he doesn’t want the little lad to be reminded of his mother — says that if he’d been a little older when his mother died it would be different, but—”

“And this ‘Colin,’ he’s working locally, is he?” the sergeant interrupted.

“Yes, he’s working lunchtimes at The Cornishman. They think the world of—”

“That can’t bring in much. He is paying you rent for the cottage, is he?”

The implication was brutally obvious. Peggy chattered on, seeming to take no notice, but really she was speaking from the front of her mind only. The back of her mind was remembering the night before. The electricity had fused just as she was making her late-night drink. She had no overnighters in the second bedroom, but something — she was reluctant to analyse precisely what — made her want it fixed that night. Dick had done it before, and made light of it. Surely he wouldn’t mind. It would be the first time... She rummaged in the dark to find her torch in the kitchen drawer, and then set off across the lawn towards the cottage.

The car was not there. The cottage was in darkness and the little dirt square to the side where Dick kept the car was empty. Malcolm was sleeping in the cottage on his own. The moment she thought this she realized how silly she was being, and what a hypocrite: Malcolm was there on his own asleep all the hours Dick spent in her bed. But that thought raised new fears and doubts. Where was Dick now? In someone’s bed? He met all sorts of women while he was serving in the pub. He could have made a date with one of them. The thought that she was nothing more than his piece on the side, and that he’d gone on to more desirable pieces, tormented her. It felt like treachery. It felt like the end of her good life.

She retreated to her garden and stood in the darkness behind a bushy rhododendron. Eventually she heard Dick’s car. Well over half an hour had passed since she’d begun waiting. The car came up the lane and was parked in the usual place beside the cottage. She saw Dick’s profile before he switched the car lights off, saw him get out of the car. He was wearing a drab jerkin and was carrying that old bag of his. Somehow he didn’t look as if he was returning from a sexual assignation.

When he had disappeared into the cottage, she turned and trudged back to her darkened house, somewhat relieved in her mind, but still doubtful. What did one look like when one returned from a sexual assignation? she asked herself. And even if he was not, where had he been? What had he been doing?

“Now, if you’ll take us to the cottage—” said the sergeant.

“I can get the key if you like, then you can look over it if they’re not in,” said Peggy.

She was not betraying them, merely giving Dick time to get them both away. She pottered inside to take as long as possible to find the key. In her heart she knew he was the man they were looking for. In her heart she knew she had lost them both.

“Come on, Captain, we’re going for a drive,” shouted Dick as he ran through the tiny living room, tripping over a coffee table, then righting himself and dashing up the stairs. When he came down, clutching the bag, heavy from last night, Malcolm was still on the floor with his jigsaw.

“Why are we going for a drive, Daddy? It’s nearly my bedtime.”

Dick grabbed his jacket, then picked up the little boy and ran out with him.

“It’s a lovely evening for a drive,” he said, shoving him in the car, but taking care to click the belt in place around him. He ran round to the driver’s door, and the key was in the ignition and the car being backed into the lane before Malcolm could make further protest.

He knew he shouldn’t drive fast through the village. He tried to moderate his speed, but he was possessed by the urgency of the situation. As he scorched past The Cornishman he saw that one of the local policemen was having an off-duty pint at a little rustic table the landlord had set out for good summer days. In his mirror he saw him getting out his mobile phone.

He knew the roads around Briscow now like a connoisseur. He took a shortcut, then another, then was out not onto the motorway but on the old main road to Bristol. Now he could really open up. If only he had had a new car, or any really powerful one. With a bit of luck the police vehicle wouldn’t be much better than his. He put five miles between him and Briscow, then six, seven.

Then he saw the police car in the mirror. Moments later he heard its siren.

The police car wasn’t an old banger, or even a sedate family model Ford. It was gaining on him. He pushed the accelerator down to the floor. He was seized momentarily with exhilaration, but at the back of his mind something outside of him seemed to be shouting: The Dream. The Nightmare. And then he began to sweat, and a quieter voice whispered to him: the dead child. He tried to continue, tried to squeeze more speed out of the car, but his heart was not in it. In the mirror he saw the police car gaining on him, its siren gathering in intensity.

He took his foot off the accelerator. The car dropped speed, began coasting. He changed lanes, let the car slow down, then let it chug to the side of the road and stop. As he pulled on the hand brake the police car came to a halt in front of him. Two policemen jumped out and ran over to lean in his window. One had a hard face and piercing cruel eyes. The younger one had unformed features but compassionate eyes.

“Are you Richard Randall, going by the name of Colin Morton?” the sergeant asked, flicking his ID in his face. Dick considered, then nodded.

“You know it all, I expect,” he said. “Yes, I am.”

“And this is your son Malcolm Randall?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Richard Randall, I am arresting you...”

The policemen agreed to drop Malcolm off at Peggy’s as a temporary measure. Dick knew hard-eyes wouldn’t want the embarrassment of a child around him cramping his style. “You must be nice to Mummy when you go home,” he said to the boy as Peggy came out to collect him, not looking him in the face. “She must have missed you all this time.”

When he was alone with the policemen, driving to the station in Launceston, he suddenly broke down. It was the end of his dream, the very end. Somehow it felt like the end of his life.

He looked up, red-eyed, at the young constable handcuffed to him in the backseat of the car.

“Will you tell his mother I would never have done anything to harm him? That’s why I stopped. I love that boy. Tell Selena it’s all up to her now. Will you tell her that exactly?”

“Of course I will. What if she asks what you mean?”

He didn’t answer directly.

“Tell her I don’t want to see her, or the boy. She’ll understand. Tell her it’s all up to her.”

Then they drew into Launceston Police Station and began the long business of interviews and charging.

Having Malcolm back was like a dream for Selena. Inspector Purley had flown down to Bristol the night of Dick’s arrest, hired a car, then participated in interviews the next day. He had phoned Selena to say they were sure it was Malcolm and he’d bring him back up North the next day. No point in her coming down.

It was late afternoon when his car had driven up the street and parked outside her Darlington home. She had rushed to the front door just in time to hear the inspector say, “Run to Mummy,” and, picking the little bundle up, to hug him, kiss him. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the inspector raise a hand, then get back into his car and drive off.

Malcolm was grown out of all recognition, and was confident beyond belief. He gravely inspected his old toys, told her what he’d most like for tea, and ran around the garden when she told him that Finny the cat was out there. All his talk and memories were of Daddy, and he’d tell her quite disjointedly things they’d done on the road, how Daddy had taken him away, how Jemima at Peggy’s was always naughty. When he asked her, “Are you my mummy now?” she had almost choked, and had taken him in her arms and said they’d never be apart again.

Later in the evening she had a phone call from the young constable in Launceston. She was almost incoherent in her joy and thanks, and she was really grateful to get Dick’s message to her.

“I suppose they’ll be bringing him back up North for trial,” she said wistfully. “I could go and see him then.”

“He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t... feel he should see you or Malcolm.” Being a kind-hearted young man, he added: “Yet. I don’t think he feels the time is ripe.”

Selena was sad, but she didn’t have time to stay sad. Soon it was time for bed, but first she had to wash away the grime and mustiness of travel from the little boy. She ran the bath, just lukewarm as he liked it, and Malcolm insisted on undressing himself, a new departure for Selena, who had always done it in the past. She wondered at his chubbiness — what had Dick been feeding him on? — but saw how good and competent he was in all the little things he did for himself.

He climbed into the bath himself, slowly, seriously, but once in, he was more interested in his old rubber duck than in washing himself. Still a child in some things, Selena thought. She worked up a soapy lather on his flannel and began washing him herself. It was pure pleasure, and it felt as if she was washing off all those months when only his father had had him, seen him grow. She leant over the bath to wash the far side of him, and it was then that she saw it.

The birthmark on his hip.

The oval-shaped birthmark, like a rugby ball, on the left hip. Just as she had seen it described in television interviews, in newspaper articles, by Carol Parker. This wasn’t Malcolm. This was Anton Parker, born Anton Weissner, when his mother was married to his German father. She let the flannel fall, felt faint, and sank back onto the chair by the wall. Anton played on, oblivious, dipping the duck’s head under the water as he had seen ducks do at Briscow.

It was Dick who had snatched Anton. That was six days after he had snatched Malcolm. In that time Malcolm must have died. She felt tears come into her eyes for her lost child, but she suppressed them. She had to think, to be practical. How had he died? Naturally? In a car chase, perhaps? There had been various sightings and police pursuits. Dick had taken this little boy as a substitute, called him Malcolm, taught him to call himself Malcolm. That’s why he would not let him say more than a word or two on the phone, in case she recognised or suspected this was not her boy. She thought of Carol Parker, desperate and dispirited, appealing on British television, convinced that her husband had taken their son to Germany, forever.

Then she remembered her husband’s words: “It’s all up to her now.” Suddenly they had quite a new meaning. From the bath came splashings and chuckles of pleasure. She drew her head up straight and opened her eyes.

“Come along, Malcolm — out of the bath now and let Mummy dry you.”