The Sleeping and the Dead

Chapter One

Peter Porteous walked to work. It was still a novelty. He liked it all, the overgrown hedges, birdsong, cow muck not dog muck on the road. Having made the decision to walk, he walked every day. Whatever the weather. Even in this heat. He was a man of routine. On the edge of the town he went into the newsagent’s by the bridge to buy the Independent. He checked the time on the church clock. In the office he would drink a mug of decaffeinated coffee and begin to sift through the overnight reports before meeting his team at the ten o’clock briefing. And at the briefing he knew there would be nothing to cause anxiety. Cranford was a small town. The team covered a huge geographical area, but there was seldom the sense of being swamped by uncontrollable events which he had experienced in his previous post. That was why he had transferred to Cranford and that was why he would enjoy it. He knew colleagues who functioned better under pressure but he hated panic and chaos. Stress scared him. He had designed his working life to avoid it.

He was waiting for the kettle to boil for his coffee when the telephone rang.

‘Porteous.’ He continued to make neat, pithy notes in the margin of the report on his desk.

‘We’ve got a body, sir.’

He took a breath. ‘Where?’

‘In the lake. Only visible now because the water’s so low. It was found by an instructor at the Adventure Centre.’

‘Natural causes then?’

‘Unlikely, sir.’

‘Why?’

‘It was tied to an anchor. Weighed down.’

‘So.’ The kettle clicked off. Still holding the phone he poured water on to coffee granules. ‘Murder.’

There was a brief silence. Perhaps the sergeant was expecting a rush of orders. Instructions and queries fired one after another. None came. Instead Porteous asked calmly, ‘Any identification?’

‘Can’t even tell the sex. It looks as if it’s been there some time.’

‘No rush then. They haven’t done anything daft like trying to lift it from the water?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Tell them to leave everything as it is. Are you clear? Exactly. I want the pathologist there. I seem to remember that water has a preservative effect. Once the corpse is lifted from the lake it’ll start to decompose very quickly. Make sure they understand.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Get hold of Eddie Stout. Tell him I’ll meet him there. And Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll need a car.’

Before leaving his office Peter Porteous drank his coffee and finished reading the report on his desk.

The town had its back turned to the lake, was separated from it by a small hill and a forestry plantation. There were no views. Many of the older residents could remember the valley before it was flooded to create a vast reservoir and still disapproved. They had quite enough water. In the hills it never stopped raining. Let the city dwellers fend for themselves.

The road to the lake was signposted Cranwell Village and showed a No Through Road symbol. Beneath it was a brown tourist sign which said Cranford Water Adventure Centre. Cranwell Village was a scattering of houses on either side of the single-track road. There was a church and a pub and a country-house hotel where, the month before, Porteous had briefly attended a colleague’s engagement party. Then there was a bend in the road and a sudden, startling expanse of water, this morning dazzling in the sunlight. The lake had a circumference of thirty miles. The valley twisted, so although Porteous could see across the water to the opposite bank, each end of the reservoir was invisible. The lane ended in a car park, with a grassed area to one side and a couple of picnic tables. There was a noticeboard with a map showing a series of walks and nature trails. A gravel track followed the lake a little further north to the Adventure Centre, a wooden building of Scandinavian design, surrounded by trees. Porteous parked by the noticeboard and studied it before walking up the track.

Detective Sergeant Stout had arrived before him. His car was parked in one of the residents’ marked spaces next to the building. He wore, as he always did, a suit and a tie, and looked out of place in the clearing, surrounded by trees, with pine needles underfoot. An officious garden gnome. Next to him stood a fit, middle-aged man in shorts, a black T-shirt with the Adventure Centre logo on the front in scarlet, and the rubber sandals used by climbers. Porteous always treated Stout carefully. The older man had been expected to get the promotion which had brought Porteous to the team. He was well liked but too close to retirement now to move further.

‘Thank you for getting here so quickly, Eddie.’ As soon as the words were spoken he thought they sounded sychophantic, insincere. Stout only nodded. ‘Perhaps you could introduce us.’

Stout nodded again. He was a small, squat man with the knack of speaking without appearing to move his mouth. He would have made a brilliant ventriloquist, though Porteous had never passed on the compliment. ‘This is Daniel Duncan. He’s director of the Adventure Centre. One of his instructors found the body.’

Porteous held out his hand. Duncan took it reluctantly.

‘Perhaps I could talk to him,’ Porteous said.

‘Her,’ Duncan said. ‘Helen Blake. She’s a bit upset.’

‘We should give her a few minutes then. Is there anything we can see from the shore?’

From where they were standing the view of the lake was obscured by trees. Duncan led them along a path to the back of the building, to a dinghy park, where there were half a dozen Mirror dinghies and a rack of canoes. A concrete slipway sloped gently into the water. He walked very quickly, bouncing away from them on the balls of his feet, as if he hoped the matter could be dealt with immediately.

‘This is the last thing we need,’ he said crossly. ‘We’ve only been going three years and this is the first season we’ve shown any profit.’

‘But the building must have been here longer than that.’ It looked weathered. Lichen was growing on the roof.

‘It’s nearly ten years old. It used to be run by the council but in the last round of cuts they had to sell it off. I took it over then.’

‘What was here before that?’

Duncan shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘It was a caravan site,’ Stout volunteered. ‘A sort of holiday centre. I think the people who owned it went bust. The wooden building wasn’t here then, though, and the trees have grown a lot. There was the reception and a bar nearer the lane. Brick and concrete. An ugly place. I remember it being demolished.’

Porteous leaned against the stone wall which separated the dinghy park from the shore. There was the smell of baked mud. A slight breeze moved the water but seemed not to reach him.

‘Where did Ms Blake find the body?’

Duncan pointed to a rotting wooden staithe which jutted out from the water about thirty yards from the wall.

‘This is the driest summer since the reservoir was built. The water’s never been so low. Those posts haven’t been exposed since I’ve been here. Not until a couple of weeks ago. I think they formed part of a jetty or a pier when the lake was first flooded. The body’s near that far post.’

‘So it was probably weighted and thrown from the jetty? Before it collapsed?’

Duncan shrugged again as if he wanted to disassociate himself from the enquiry.

Porteous gave up on him and turned to Stout. ‘I don’t suppose you remember when the jetty fell into disuse. That might help us date the body.’

‘I don’t think it fell down. I think the council knocked it down when the Adventure Centre was built. They didn’t want the kids drowning themselves.’

Porteous pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. ‘So we’re talking a ten-year-old body. At least. When was the reservoir completed?’

‘1968. The year Bet and I moved here.’

‘So, a twenty-odd-year window of opportunity, if we accept the body’s been in for ten years. It’ll be a nightmare just sorting through the missing-person records.’ He didn’t talk as if it would be a nightmare. His voice was suddenly more cheerful. ‘I don’t suppose anyone obvious comes to mind? As a candidate for the victim.’ He’d learned already that Eddie was famous for his memory and his local knowledge. According to the desk sergeant he went to bed reading the ‘Hatches, Matches and Dispatches’ column of the local paper.

‘Give us a break, sir. We’ve no age or sex. I’m not a miracle worker.’

‘That’s not what I was told.’

Duncan had wandered away from them and was pulling one of the dinghies on to a trolley. Porteous joined him but didn’t offer to help.

‘How deep is the water there?’

‘The bank’s steep at this point so usually it’s very deep. The post must have snapped off sometime because the jetty would have been higher than that. It’s silty there too. This year? You’d probably be able to walk out in thigh waders.’

‘Thanks. We’ll see how the forensic team want to play it.’

He found it hard to imagine Carver, the pathologist, in thigh waders. He was a dapper man given to flamboyant ties and waistcoats. His hair was a deep oily black, which could only have come out of a bottle. Even in the Teletubby paper suit he put on to enter a crime scene he gave the impression of neatness and vanity.

‘Will you wait here for Mr Carver, Eddie? I’ll see if Ms Blake’s up to a few questions. Mr Duncan, if you wouldn’t mind…’

Duncan seemed at first not to have heard. He finished coiling a piece of rope, straightened, then reluctantly set off towards the Centre. Porteous followed.

‘Where do you get your customers from?’

‘That’s hardly relevant to your enquiries, is it? If the body’s as old as you think.’ He stopped in his track so suddenly that Porteous almost walked into him. ‘Sorry, that was rude. Everything I own is sunk into this place. I’m worried. In the summer holidays most of our clients are kids whose parents think it would be good for them to do more than sit in front of the computer screen all day. At the moment the whole place has been taken over by one school party. We’re starting to attract more adult groups too – companies looking for a quick fix in corporate bonding.’ He opened double doors into a wood-panelled lobby with a couple of chairs, a payphone and a drinks machine.

‘Helen’s through there, in the common-room. I’ll be in the office if you need me.’

Helen Blake was a large-boned redhead in her early twenties. Her face was still drained of colour, so the scattering of freckles on her nose and cheekbones looked livid and raw. She was alone.

‘What have you done with all the students?’ He hoped the joky tone would reassure her but she looked up, startled, and some of the coffee she was holding spilled on to her jeans.

‘They’ve got pony-trekking this morning.’

‘Would you normally be with them?’

‘No. I only do water sports.’ She gave a laugh which rattled at the back of her throat. ‘I did try riding once. I got a blister on my bum and the beast bit me.’

‘How long have you been working here?’ He wanted her more relaxed before he started on the difficult questions.

‘This is my first season. I did sports science at university. Canoeing’s my passion. I compete. I’m hoping for an Olympic trial.’ She set the coffee mug on a low table. Her hand had stopped shaking.

‘Do you like it here?’

‘Yeah it’s OK. Dan Duncan could do with being a bit more laid back, but as he always says, he’s got a lot resting on this place.’

‘Did you have a group with you on the water this morning?’

‘No, thank God. I practise on my own before breakfast every day. One of the perks of the job.’

‘Could you take me through exactly what happened?’

‘I was on my way in.’ The words came in breathless pants. ‘I never take the students close to the old jetty. It would be tempting fate. They’d get stuck or hit one of the underwater planks and capsize. I suppose I was curious. There seems to be less water in the lake every day and I wanted to see what else might emerge. I didn’t expect a body. It seemed to be floating not far from the surface. Very white. Hardly human. Not human at all.’ She shivered and pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

‘Could you see the anchor?’

‘Not then. It was covered in silt. I put my blade in to steady the canoe and the movement of the water cleared it long enough for me to see the shape. I came in then. I couldn’t look any more. Dan called the police. Two men rowed out in one of our dinghies. Perhaps they didn’t believe me. Perhaps they thought I was imagining it. I wish I had been.’

‘They had to check,’ he said gently.

‘What will happen now?’

‘We’re waiting for the forensic team.’

‘I won’t have to see it again, will I?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What I can’t bear,’ she said, ‘is the thought of him out there all this time and none of us realizing. It’s as if nobody missed him. As if nobody cared.’

If it was a he, Porteous thought. As she spoke he saw beyond her, through a long window, to the scene outside. Carver’s Range Rover was pulling into the drive. The pathologist parked it neatly beside the Centre’s minibus and climbed out. From the back seat he pulled out a pair of rubber waders. They were spotless and shiny, as black as his hair. Porteous hid a small grin behind his hand.

‘What time will the children be back?’ He didn’t want an audience of sniggering, pointing teenagers.

‘Not until late this afternoon. They’ve taken a picnic.’ She followed his gaze. ‘You’ll be busy. Don’t worry about me. I’m OK.’

Later he, Stout and Carver sat in the Range Rover to compare notes. Carver had with him a silver thermos flask of coffee which he passed around, wiping the cup each time with a paper handkerchief, like a priest at communion.

‘Really,’ he said in the prissy voice which made some of Porteous’s colleagues want to thump him. ‘It’s most interesting. I’ve read about it of course, but this is the first time I’ve seen it.’

‘Seen what?’ Porteous had come across Carver when he was working in the city and was prepared to be patient with him. The man was a good pathologist and he could usually be persuaded to commit himself. Porteous would put up with a lot for that.

‘Adipocere. That’s what it’s called. It’s caused by saponification. Literally the making of soap. The effect of water on the body fat. One of the first pathologists to describe it said it’s as if the corpse is encased in mutton suet. Remarkably apt as I’m sure you’ll agree. Sometimes the adipocere preserves the internal organs. I won’t be able to tell you that, of course, until the post-mortem. I’ll do that as soon as I can. This afternoon if it can be arranged. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my colleagues didn’t want to be present.’ He took a fastidious sip of his coffee. ‘Really, I can hardly wait.’

Chapter Two

Porteous lived in a barn as big as a church, which had been converted into three flats. He had the top floor to himself. Exposed rafters stretched to a sloping roof. There were two long windows, a view over farmland. Occasionally, if the light was right, he could see the glint of the lake in the distance, like a child’s imagined glimpse of the sea. One wall was exposed stone, the others plastered and whitewashed. On these he hung the paintings he collected. He always went to the fine-art students’ finals exhibition at the university in the city. Usually he saw something he liked.

It was early evening. Porteous didn’t believe in unnecessary overtime. It messed up his budgets, and tasks which could normally be fitted into the working day expanded, became more complicated, to fit the time allowed. Tonight, despite the body in the lake, he sent his team home at the usual time. There was nothing they could do until they had identification. Besides, he wanted them calm and reasonable in the morning. He hated the frantic, febrile atmosphere which sometimes enveloped a murder case. Rational judgement was lost. It was as if there was something heroic about the obsession with one victim, one perpetrator, about the lack of sleep, the passion stoked by alcohol. He had, however, brought work home with him. He had carried six large box files up the open stairs. They contained the flimsy copies of missing-person reports between 1968 and 1985. The last five of the years which were of interest to him, 1986-1990, had been computerized, and he would check those in the morning.

He had attended Carver’s post-mortem. As the pathologist had suggested, there was quite an audience. The little man had played up to them, preening himself, throwing out scientific jokes and puns which meant little to Porteous but raised a titter amongst his colleagues.

Porteous had taken notes in impeccable shorthand, following Carver’s commentary exactly. The pathologist had performed like a music-hall magician, and there was likely to be as much information in the suggestion, the conjecture, the surprise discovery as in the completed official report. Porteous set his notes on the painted table which stood under one of the windows and went to the tiny kitchen to make a pot of tea. He liked Earl Grey, weak with a slice of lemon. He poured a dribble, was satisfied that it was ready and filled the cup. Then he returned to his notes and translated them in his head.

Carver had confirmed that the body had been in the water for at least ten years. The victim was a young male, aged between sixteen and twenty-five. He was five feet ten inches tall and, despite the adipocere, which usually occurred only when the victim had considerable body fat, he was of slender build. Carver had been excited by that fact, had thought it might warrant a note in a scientific journal. Enough of the organs, protected by the hard white layer of adipocere, remained for Carver to give a cause of death. The young man had been stabbed. By a knife with a short but unusually wide blade. A dagger of some sort. He had been stabbed in the back. A sharp upward movement into the heart. Either the perpetrator had known what he was doing or he had been very lucky. At this Carver had looked at his friends and grinned.

‘Very exotic, gentlemen, very theatrical, as I’m sure you’ll agree, for our small town in the hills.’

The body had been tied to the anchor by a piece of nylon rope, which had been looped around the waist. The young man had been clothed, though most of the garments had rotted and only tatters remained. The scraps had been retained and the forensic team was examining them. He had been wearing boots made of a soft leather or suede. Around his wrist was a plaited leather bracelet, which looked home-made. Perhaps from a bootlace.

At this Porteous stopped for a moment and took a sip of tea. He had been a child in the seventies. His only brother had been ten years older, and Porteous pictured him preparing to go out for the night. He saw him quite clearly, standing in front of the mirror in his parents’ room, the only long mirror in the house. He was wearing wide trousers, desert boots, a fringed suede jacket. Around his neck was a leather thong threaded with wooden beads. The victim’s bracelet suggested to Porteous the fashion of the seventies. The end of flower power. Not punk or the new romantics. He made a note and continued.

There had been some dental work. Carver announced this as if they should be grateful to him. Which Porteous certainly was. After all this time it held the best chance of positive identification. There had not been extensive work on the teeth – one extraction and two small fillings – but a record of the mouth, perhaps even an X-ray would have been taken. There was no guarantee that the dentist was still in business or that the records had been kept but at least it provided an avenue of investigation. Porteous thought it would give his team something to do the following day. He liked to keep them busy.

He leant back in his chair and emptied the pot into his wide blue cup – part of the tea service which had been a present to himself when he moved into the barn. He stretched with satisfaction. This was why he had joined the police. Not to save the world. Not to race around the countryside in fast cars or strut the city streets in a uniform. But to bring order, to solve problems, to understand.

He set the post-mortem notes to one side and pulled the first box file towards him, savouring a moment of anticipation before opening it. This was what he loved, this precise and meticulous sorting of facts. He had never understood why his colleagues thought such work tedious.

Each report was a minor human tragedy, baldly told, given a dignity because the facts were unembellished. He sorted them first into gender and age, rejecting the menopausal women with depression, the elderly wanderers from care homes, the occasional heart-breaking ten-year-old who had gone to a friend’s house to play and never returned. Still he was left with a mountain of paper. The majority of missing-person reports was for young males. They’d left home after problems at school, a row with parents, or in search of a more exciting life. He knew that many would have returned or got in touch. The relatives, simply relieved that the panic was over, would never have thought to inform the police.

He became engrossed in the task and couldn’t let it go. He had planned just to sort through the paperwork but began phoning the contact numbers for relatives. Inevitably some had moved or died, but Cranford was the sort of town where people knew one another. Other phone numbers were given, alternative names suggested. The people wanted to talk. Porteous listened patiently to tales of lads who’d been scallies as youngsters but who’d gone on to do well for themselves, who’d taken university degrees, settled down, had families. The worst calls were when boys were still missing and no contact had ever been made. Porteous heard the flurry of hope in elderly voices.

‘Does this mean there’s some news?’

‘No, no,’ he said gently. ‘Just checking old files.’

Some had heard about the discovery of the body in the lake on local radio and put two and two together.

‘But that can’t be our Alan,’ one said. ‘He could swim like a fish.’

He stopped when the light faded and it was too dark to read the scrawled names and numbers on the copy paper. He had reached 1980. If nothing came of the names he had set to one side he would check the files for 1980-1990, but he thought he had gone far enough. He had a picture of the victim in his head. A boy who was a teenager in the early seventies just after the lake had been flooded; who wore desert boots and a leather bootlace bracelet; who had been stabbed in the back.

He stood up and pressed the light switch. The room was lit by spots fixed to the ceiling beams. They shone through the rafters, throwing shadows on to the stripped wooden floor. He was hungry. He loved to cook; the process of peeling and chopping relaxed him. But today he wanted something quick and simple. He filled a stainless-steel pan with water for spaghetti and sweated garlic and red chilli in olive oil then covered the lot with freshly sliced Parmesan. He ate as if he hadn’t seen food for days, shovelling it in with a spoon and a fork. He was sitting at the table where he’d been working and he looked out through the uncovered window at the lights which were all that remained of the roads and the farmhouses. Later he poured himself a glass of wine.

He liked to go to bed early but tonight found it impossible to let the investigation go. He thought he was as bad as the macho colleagues who bragged of their nights without sleep in pursuit of their prey. Still with his glass in his hand he read through his shortlist of candidates again, hoping to pick up on some minute detail which would point him to the man he was looking for.

He judged them, just as a betting man would pick a horse from a racing paper, using a mixture of fact, experience and superstition. There were three. After those he had picked a dozen or so more to follow up if nothing came of the first group. He set the three sheets before him in alphabetical order and read them again.

The first was Alan Brownscombe, the boy who could swim like a fish. His parents still lived in Cranford. They came originally from the West Country and had planned on moving back there when they retired, but even after retirement they had stayed where they were – ‘otherwise how would Alan know where to find us?’

Porteous had spoken to the mother. She had worked as a dinner lady in Cranwell Village First School. The father had worked for British Gas and taken a redundancy package when the company was privatized. Mrs Brownscombe could remember exactly what happened when Alan disappeared. She had the story pat, word for word, like a favourite bedtime tale repeated over and over to a child. He was the eldest of three, a bright boy, and he’d gone to Leeds University to read electrical engineering. He’d never been away from home before. Perhaps he was homesick. Perhaps the course was more demanding than he’d expected. At any rate when she managed to get through to him on the phone she sensed he was unhappy. It was Easter when he went missing. He was nineteen. It was 1978, a bit outside Porteous’s preferred time-scale but not by much. Alan had come home for the holidays and managed to get a job on the caravan site by the lake, cleaning the vans before the start of the season, doing small repairs. One day he set off for work and never arrived. He didn’t take anything with him other than the packet of cheese-and-pickle sandwiches she’d made up for his lunch. So far as they knew he had no money. He didn’t return to university and they never saw him again.

‘You say he was unhappy,’ Porteous had said. The woman’s West Country accent was preserved intact. If they could tell her what happened to her son, even if he were dead, she’d feel she could move home. He’d wanted to help her. ‘Could he have been clinically depressed?’

‘I don’t know,’ she’d said. ‘It wasn’t something you thought of then. Not with a nineteen-year-old lad. And he was home with us. We’d not have sent him back if he didn’t want to go, whatever sort of noises his father was making.’

The height and the build fitted the body in the lake. She gave Porteous the name of Alan’s dentist without asking why he wanted to know.

Michael Grey was reported missing only after his foster parents had died and the executors of their wills had tried to trace him. They’d left him the small house where they’d been living. He’d have been twenty-two at the time, but when a firm of solicitors tried to track him down they discovered that no one had seen him since he was eighteen. That would have been in 1972. It was a peculiar case but Porteous tried not to read too much into it. Social Services seemed not to feel too much responsibility for kids in care once they were sixteen. They drifted in a twilight world of hard-to-let flats, hostels and mates’ floors. And if the next of kin had been named as one of the executors presumably there wouldn’t have been much incentive to trace the boy. Perhaps they would have received the profit from the house in his absence. The description was vague. Porteous had the feeling that the person reporting Michael as missing had never seen him. Nothing ruled him out from being the dead boy in the lake, but there was nothing to suggest it. There was nothing as useful as a photograph.

Carl Jackson had lived twenty miles from Cranford with his parents, who farmed sheep on the other side of the lake. He beamed gappily from a school snap attached to the file. He was sixteen and had learning difficulties and was described by the constable who’d taken the first missing-person report as ‘mentally retarded’. Because of his vulnerable status there’d been a big search for him, involving not only the police and mountain-rescue team but also members of the public. He attended Cranford Adult Training Centre and was collected every morning from the end of the farm track by a bus which picked up all the trainees from rural areas. His parents were elderly, considered by the staff at the centre as overprotective. Usually one of them waited with him for the bus and was there to meet him in the evening. In an attempt to encourage Carl’s independence it was suggested that he could make the half-mile walk down the track alone. What could go wrong? The track led only to the farmhouse. It would be impossible for him to get lost. But one day, the third that this experiment in independent living was tried, he failed to arrive home. His parents waited less than half an hour before going out to look for him. Two hours later they alerted the police. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air.

Porteous had phoned the contact number without much hope of success. The Jacksons had been in their fifties when Carl had disappeared in 1969. He was answered by a machine. ‘You’re through to Balk Farm Computing. No one is available to take your call…’ The farmhouse had been sold to yuppies, the land dispersed. It was happening to hill farms all over the north of England. It had happened to the farm where he was living.

He looked again at the photo. Carl was dressed in a check shirt, corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted V-neck pullover. Old man’s clothes. It was hard to imagine him wearing a hippy leather bracelet.

The long case clock in the corner chimed the half-hour. Half-past midnight. Porteous rinsed out his glass, stoppered the bottle and put it in the fridge. In bed he took ten minutes to go through the breathing exercise which usually helped him to relax, but he slept fitfully, haunted by the grainy photographs of Carl Jackson and Alan Brownscombe, by the fat white body in the mortuary and by Carver’s grin.

Chapter Three

They sat in Porteous’s office, which was so small that their knees almost touched, making an effort to get on.

Eddie Stout had seen Porteous cart off the boxes of files the night before and wondered what was going on. Was the man some sort of control freak? That wasn’t his job. Didn’t he trust the rest of the team? But Eddie was a Christian, a lay minister on the Methodist circuit, out every Sunday preaching to a handful of old ladies in the windswept chapels in the hills, so he had to forgive Porteous for being promoted over him and he had to make allowances. It was a strain for him, Porteous could see that. The silence between them was awkward.

Porteous liked Stout. Perhaps it would have been easier if the man had been less hospitable and generous. Why was Stout trying so hard? When Porteous had first arrived Stout had invited him to dinner at his home – an overture of friendship which had been impossible for Porteous to refuse. It had been an unexpectedly pleasant evening but Porteous felt he had disappointed Stout because he had given too little of himself away. He had taken flowers and chocolates as gifts instead of wine. Methodists didn’t drink, did they? But it seemed that nowadays they did, and after several glasses of home-brewed beer Stout had become mellow, almost Dickensian, sitting in a fat armchair, puffing his pipe, surrounded by evidence of his family. Porteous had drunk little and maintained his guard.

Stout’s wife, Bet, was plump and motherly. There were two grown-up children, settled down with babies of their own, and photographs of them were on the mantelpiece and the window-sills. Then there was Ruthie, the baby, ten years younger than the others, a wild adolescent with cropped hair, who had eaten with them, entertaining them with stories about school. Afterwards she had disappeared off to a party with her boyfriend, but not without giving her father a big hug first.

‘You’ve no family?’ Bet had asked, as if it were a loss in his life, something to be pitied, to be compensated for with comforting casseroles and sticky puddings.

He had shaken his head. ‘Never married.’

He had seen them looking at each other and had read their thoughts. At first they had considered that he might be one of them – a Christian. Perhaps of the happy clappy born-again variety, saving himself for the right girl. That might have explained his reluctance to go to the pub after work, to join in the swearing, the banter about women. But he hadn’t used the right phrases, as recognizable as a Masonic handshake. He hadn’t made himself known.

So then they had wondered if he might be gay. That too was something he was used to. It was a way for colleagues to explain his apparent celibacy, his love of art and theatre. He had heard the sniggers and the jokes, though he never responded to them. Eddie and Bet hadn’t sniggered – they were too kind and too tolerant for that. But they had felt cheated because he hadn’t been more open with them and they were curious. Later he was sure they would ask Ruthie what she thought. Porteous wondered what the answer would be.

Now, in his office, so close to Eddie that he could smell the tobacco, he had a sudden urge to explain. It would have been like talking to a priest or a shrink: ‘Ten years ago I had a nervous breakdown. Stress. Now I avoid it. You know, prevention better than cure. And I take the medication. I like my life ordered, predictable. That’s why I live alone. So I can control what goes on. It runs in the family, actually, psychiatric disorder. My dad was a nutter. He jumped off a bridge in front of the Birmingham Intercity. It’s like diabetes. Genetic.’

But it wasn’t like diabetes. Diabetes would have been no big deal; his promotion wouldn’t have been a cause for self-congratulation on the part of his superiors. ‘This shows that we take equal opportunities seriously, Peter. You’re a trailblazer. But we suggest that you don’t make a song and dance about it. You need authority, the confidence, you know, of your troops. Your past illness is no business of anyone else, is it?’

He was aware suddenly of Stout watching him, waiting for him to speak. God, he thought, it won’t take him long to work out that I’m a headcase if I sit here with my mouth open, staring into space. He pulled the three files out of his briefcase, lay them on the desk.

‘Do you remember any of these, Eddie?’

Stout read them quickly, flicking his eyes occasionally back to his boss’s face.

‘Carl Jackson. I remember that one. I was up on the hill with everyone else searching, even when I’d come off shift. It was March but the weather was foul. Low mist. Rain. I thought I’d been mad to move away from the coast.’

‘Could it be our chap in the lake?’

‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’ He seemed angry with himself.

‘So it could be him?’

‘Carl was murdered, if that’s what you mean. There’s no way he just wandered away from the track and got lost.’

‘But it doesn’t say anything here about a murder investigation.’

‘There wasn’t one. Everyone was content to put it down as an accident. According to the press, if anyone was to blame it was the social worker who suggested that he should be allowed to walk home on his own. But I talked to her in the day centre and I was impressed. She said Carl was deaf. No one had picked up how profound that disability was, and she thought he was more capable than his parents allowed him to be. In the few months since she’d known him he’d begun to read quite fluently. She thought he might catch up enough to move on to the technical college, perhaps hold down a real job. But his parents were horrified by those plans. They wanted nothing to do with them.’

‘Hard, I suppose, to stop being protective after all those years.’

‘There was more to it than that. They were a strange family.’ It was Stout’s turn to stare into space, to drag back the memories, image by image.

‘You think one of the parents was responsible for his death?’

‘Not directly. The wife, Sarah, had a younger brother. I can’t believe I can’t remember the name. He caused me enough sleepless nights at the time. He didn’t live at the farm but he’d never married and he spent a lot of time there. He was assistant manager in a hardware shop in town. It’s been closed for years but it was a big place then, dealt in agricultural supplies and machinery too. In his spare time he got involved in community work.’ He turned his head so he wasn’t looking directly at Porteous. ‘Quite a saint if you listened to Sarah. He was a scout leader in Cranford for years and ran the youth club in our church until I persuaded the committee it wasn’t such a good idea.’

‘Child abuse?’

‘Nothing proved. Never charged.’ Stout paused. ‘It was before all the child-safety legislation, don’t forget. Before Childline. Some people even treated it as a bit of a joke. If a pervy old man liked to touch young lads’ behinds when they were horsing around, so what? At least it kept the kids off the streets. And no one else wanted the responsibility of organizing the group.’

‘What put you on to him?’

‘Rumours. Some of the things the kids said. The fact that he was such a loner. He never liked working with other adults. If he had an assistant it was an older lad who’d gone through the group. I had just enough to persuade my church to drop him. Tactfully of course, with a letter of thanks and a ten-quid book token. But not enough to take it further.’

‘Until Carl Jackson disappeared.’

‘Even then it wasn’t a central line of investigation. I was a young DC. New to the district. No connections. I passed on the rumours and some enquiries were made but it seemed that the bloke had an alibi for the time Carl disappeared.’ Porteous waited for Stout to continue but he was frowning, preoccupied. ‘I’ve just remembered his name. It was Reeves. Alec Reeves.’

‘You don’t think much of the alibi?’

‘It was half-day closing at the shop so his boss couldn’t vouch for him. Reeves claimed he was at home taking one of his lads through his paces for the Queen’s Scout badge.’

‘And the boy bore it out?’

‘Too scared or too involved not to. So far as I know no other checks were made on where they both were that afternoon.’

‘Would you be able to dig out the name of the witness?’

‘Aye. I made sure I kept all my notes on that one. I knew it would come back to haunt me.’

‘Do you know what happened to Carl’s parents? I tried to phone the farm last night. The number’s the same but it seems to be some sort of office now. Computers.’

‘Alf, the father, died. We didn’t think he was involved in any way with Carl’s disappearance. He was a grafter but not the sharpest tool in the box. Last time I heard, Sarah was in one of those old folks’ council bungalows near the river. I presume she’s still alive. She’s one of those women you imagine would go on for ever. She’ll be a good age now.’

‘And Reeves?’

‘Funnily enough he left the town soon after the investigation was wrapped up.’ His voice, which was heavy with sarcasm, turned to a quiet desperation. ‘To work as a care assistant in a children’s home. I should have told someone. Said something. But he hadn’t been charged and he had a lot of powerful friends. I really didn’t think anyone would take any notice.’

‘Do you remember where he went?’

‘I don’t think I ever knew. Look, I can’t tell you if that body in the lake was Carl’s, but if it was, I can tell you who killed him and I’m glad I’ll be there to see him go down.’

‘There’s nothing we can do until we’ve checked the dental records. That’s happening this morning.’

‘I’d like to talk to Sarah. Now. While we’ve got an element of surprise.’

Porteous had never seen Eddie Stout like this. He was usually the one in the team to caution detachment: ‘We don’t get paid to act as judges,’ he’d say. ‘That’s for God and the chaps with the hairy wigs.’

‘She’ll surely have heard about the body in the lake.’

‘But no details. Not that we’re calling it murder.’

Porteous wanted to say no. If he didn’t feel he owed Eddie, he’d have refused immediately.

Eddie sensed the hesitation. ‘If it is Carl it would give us a head start. Let me see what she’s got to say for herself. You’re right. Of course she’ll have heard about the body in the lake. She might give something away. And I want to find out what happened to Alec Reeves. If he’s still working with children I want to know about it. Things are different these days.’

God, thought Porteous, suddenly feeling very tired, I haven’t been that passionate about anything in years. He sensed that Stout wouldn’t let it go and couldn’t face a confrontation. He shrugged.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘But I’m coming with you.’

Stout drove. There was no air-conditioning in the car and even with the windows down Porteous felt sticky, slightly light-headed in the heat. The bungalows were grouped around a square of grass which was brown through lack of water. Two old men in white hats stood chatting and broke off their conversation when Stout knocked on the door.

Porteous had worked out that Sarah Jackson must be at least eighty, but she opened the door to them herself, and she recognized Stout immediately.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ She had an underbite and a way of thrusting her jaw forwards to emphasize it. She was skinny and short and the mannerism gave her the air of an aggressive child. A cotton floral dress added to the impression. ‘You might as well come in.’

She led them into a small room packed with shabby furniture which must have come from the farm.

‘I heard you sold up after Alf died,’ Stout said.

‘I could hardly work the place on my own.’

‘Good timing, just before the bottom fell out of hill farming. You were lucky.’

She glared at him. ‘You make your own luck in this world.’

Porteous had the impression that this was a continuation of the sparring which had gone on twenty years before. He sat on a fireside chair that had been covered in pink stretch nylon, and watched.

‘I hear there’s a computer business in the old house now,’ Stout said. He was still standing, looking out of the window.

‘Is that what it was about?’ She hardly seemed interested. ‘I suppose there would be plenty of space.’

‘You don’t miss the place?’ Stout persisted.

‘It was never the same after Carl went.’

‘No,’ Porteous interrupted. He could feel Stout’s anger across the room. ‘It can’t have been.’

She sniffed, slightly mollified, and perched on the edge of an overstuffed chesterfield.

‘What do you want?’

‘You’ll have heard we found a body in Cranford Water?’

‘That’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Why are you so certain it’s not Carl in the lake?’

‘Because he just wandered off. It was the sort of thing he did. I told the social workers he couldn’t take in what you said to him. And it wasn’t because he couldn’t hear. Even with his deaf aid he had his head in the clouds. And he couldn’t have walked that far without anyone seeing him. Where did you find the body? Near the Adventure Centre. That’s the opposite side of the lake from the farm. A twenty-mile walk. At least. You lot were out searching before he could have made it. And, before you ask, he couldn’t swim. Or row a boat.’

She spoke with confidence. It was a well-rehearsed speech.

‘Someone could always have driven him in a car,’ Stout said softly.

‘Which someone are we talking about now?’

‘Alec had a car, didn’t he? A Morris 1100. Navy blue. It was his pride and joy as I remember.’

‘I wondered how long it would be before you got round to Alec.’ She was contemptuous, turning her back on Stout and directing the rest of the conversation at Porteous. ‘My little brother was hounded out of the town by your man, just when I needed his support the most. It was rumours at first. Gossip. Snide, like a lassie. Don’t trust Alec Reeves with your children. Then he went to his boss and accused Alec of taking our Carl. As if he would. He was good to the boy, more patient than me or Alf could ever be. He took him for treats, things we never had the time or the money to give him. The pictures on Saturday afternoons, picnics in the hills…’

She wiped the corner of her eye with an embroidered handkerchief. Porteous, who was looking closely, could see no tears.

‘Please don’t distress yourself,’ he said. ‘We thought you’d rather we came ourselves to tell you what was happening. My people are checking the dental records now – we know that Carl saw a dentist while he was at the day centre. The records are still available. You shouldn’t have long to wait. We’ll have a positive identification by this afternoon.’

Sarah Jackson was so angry that she seemed not to care. ‘That’s all very well,’ she cried. ‘But you shouldn’t have brought that man here. It wasn’t tactful. It wasn’t right.’

She stood up as if she expected them to leave but Porteous stayed where he was.

‘What happened to Alec when he left Cranford, Mrs Jackson?’

‘He did well for himself. Better than if he’d stayed here.’

‘Oh?’

‘He got a job in a home for kiddies. They sent him away to college.’ She was as proud as if she’d been talking about her own son.

‘Is he still there?’

‘He retired. I thought he might come home then. We’d been so close, him and me. Our parents died when he was still at school. I brought him up. But he couldn’t face it after what happened before. All those lies. He bought a bungalow in the Pennines not far from the school. I visit when I can. I’ll go again when it’s not so hot.’

‘Whereabouts in the Pennines?’

‘What’s it to you? I’ll not have him harassed.’ She walked towards the door and threw it open. ‘I’m an old woman. I need my peace. I’ve nothing more to say to you.’

They walked out into the glare of the sunshine. ‘I’ll be in touch this afternoon,’ Porteous said, ‘when we’ve heard back from the dentist.’ But she had already shut the door on them.

They were in the station, walking up the stairs towards Porteous’s office, when they heard footsteps running up behind them. It was Claire Wright, a young DC, flushed, excited, out of breath so she could hardly speak.

‘We’ve got a match.’ She bent double, gasping.

‘You look as if you’ve just won the Great North Run.’ Porteous forced himself to stay calm, to keep his voice light.

‘Who?’ demanded Stout. When she did not reply immediately he added, almost in a whisper, ‘Is it Carl Jackson?’

By then she had caught her breath. ‘Nah, nothing like. It’s the lad called Michael Grey.’

‘Ah.’ Porteous continued up the stairs, unlocked his door and flicked the kettle on. He waited for Stout to follow.

Chapter Four

Stout stood in the doorway of Porteous’s office.

‘You don’t seem surprised.’

‘Not too surprised, no,’ Porteous said. ‘You were right about Sarah Jackson. She does know what happened to her son. But when we talked about the body in the lake she wasn’t bothered, hardly interested. She knew it wasn’t him.’

He made a mug of tea for Eddie, strong, as he knew he liked it, and waved it at him to invite him in. ‘We’ll have to save Carl for another day.’ The words sounded unbelievably trite. ‘I’m sorry, Eddie, I mean it. Now we have to concentrate on Michael Grey, find out everything there is to know about him.’

Porteous could tell the man’s mind and heart weren’t really in it. He was still thinking about the deaf boy everyone had labelled as dumb. When this investigation was over he’d give Eddie his head for a few weeks, let him dig around for a bit. Even if nothing came of it he deserved that much.

Soon it became clear they would find out very little about Michael Grey. Not immediately at least. At first Porteous had thought it would be easy. A piece of piss, he said to himself, though not to Eddie who disapproved of such language. Michael Grey had been fostered to a couple called Brice. Fostering meant Social Services and that meant records as long as your arm – reports for the court, case conferences, personal records kept to cover the back of whichever poor social worker had been in charge of him. There would be details of the natural family at least and of any contact between them and the boy. Michael hadn’t been adopted, so he would still have been officially in care when he disappeared. Some attempt would have been made to trace him.

He sent Eddie to talk to the solicitor who’d triggered the first missing-person report after the foster parents’ death. ‘Find out who benefited from the will in the absence of the boy. Did anyone? Is the cash still being held in trust for him? What happens to it now?’

Stout slunk away like a sulky teenager. As soon as he had gone Porteous made an appointment with the senior social worker on duty at the town hall. The man was prepared to see him at once. The town hall was in the same street and of the same design as the police station – redbrick Victorian Gothic – though it had a depressing concrete and glass extension at the back, where the Social Services department was housed. A small middle-aged man named Jones met Porteous at reception and led him upstairs. They left behind them the screams of an elderly woman, demanding to see her social worker, and the increasingly irate reply of the receptionist who said she would have to wait.

They sat in a cubby-hole looking out on a busy open-plan office where one of the phones always seemed to be ringing. Jones was tidy, with a few wisps of hair combed over a balding pate. He was apologetic. ‘After you phoned I checked our records. I like to think we’re efficient in that department. But we’ve no details of a couple called Brice being registered as foster parents. Nothing at all. No application form, no record of training.’

‘Would you still have the file after all this time?’

‘Oh yes. We go back thirty years. Longer. Child protection, you see. It’s important to know who’s been looking after our children.’

‘Could the Brices have been working for someone else? A charity, perhaps? Another authority?’

‘That’s what I thought!’ He seemed impressed that Porteous had been thinking along the same lines. ‘But I’ve phoned around and I can’t find anyone else in the field who’s heard of them. I’m not saying it’s impossible that they were registered with another agency, but – if it doesn’t sound too big-headed – my contacts are second to none. I’d certainly say it’s unlikely.’

‘You’ll have a record, though, of Michael Grey?’

‘No.’ The man closed his mouth firmly, allowing no question. He sat back in his chair and clasped his hands round his small paunch. He seemed to be delighted by the mystery, and by Porteous’s discomfort.

‘But I gave you his date of birth. We found it in the dental records.’ Porteous could tell he was sounding desperate. That’ll teach me, he thought. A piece of piss.

‘It doesn’t help, I’m afraid. I’ve phoned the court. They keep their own records. No care or supervision order was placed on anyone called Michael Grey in the seventies anywhere in the county.’ He paused, savouring the moment. ‘Social Services were never involved with him either.’

‘But they must have been.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Jones leaned forward, but didn’t elaborate.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘How old was he?’ The tone was patronizing. An infant teacher talking to a particularly thick six-year-old. Just what I deserve, Porteous thought.

‘When we think he went missing? Eighteen.’

‘There you are then.’ Jones leaned back in the chair once more and smirked. ‘Over sixteen and we wouldn’t get involved. He could have been younger than that when he started living with the foster parents, if it was an informal arrangement.’

‘Perhaps you would explain.’ Porteous had never minded eating humble pie. It was surprising how people liked you to grovel. The social worker was loving it.

‘Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Something we come across all the time. Say there’s a single mum with a teenage lad. He starts to run a bit wild. Perhaps it’s nothing that would get him in trouble with the police, but he’s staying out late, skipping school. She begins to feel she’s losing control. Now, it could be that the boy has a good relationship with her parents and they offer to have him to live with them for a while. To take the heat off her until things calm down. That would be fostering of a sort, wouldn’t it? Nothing official. No need for Social Services to be involved even if the lad were under sixteen. In fact that’s usually the last thing a family under stress wants. A nosy cow from the Welfare knocking on the door.’

Porteous smiled.

‘So you’re saying these Brices were probably relatives?’

‘They might have been. Or friends. They might even have been doing it for money. All I can tell you is I don’t think they were official.’

‘Where do you suggest I go from here?’

‘Have you got the name of the school?’

‘Cranford Grammar.’ That too had been in the dental records.

‘Try there then. If it was an informal fostering they’d still have wanted the names of the natural parent. It’s possible that he moved away from home after he started the school. Most problems of that sort start in adolescence. You might even find a couple of teachers who remember him. My kids go there and some of the staff must be close to retirement.’

He led Porteous down the concrete stairs. In the waiting-room the old lady had begun to sob.

Cranford Grammar had since become Cranford High, and when Porteous phoned the school from his office he was told that it was the last day of the summer term. The secretary sounded on the verge of hysteria. In the background he heard the high-pitched yelps of children, an impatient teacher calling for mislaid reports, a yell for silence.

‘It really isn’t a good time.’

Then he explained that he was running a murder inquiry and suddenly her attitude changed. Porteous had noticed it before. It wasn’t a desire to be a good citizen and help the police. Murder had the same effect as the mention of celebrity, of a pop idol or football star. She was excited. Later she would boast to her friends that she had been involved.

He told her again what he wanted.

‘I can only think of one member of staff who would have been around then,’ she said. ‘Mr Westcott. He’s head of history. I know he has a free period first thing after lunch but that’s probably not the best time to talk to him.’

‘Why not?’ he asked politely.

‘Oh well. I suppose it’ll be all right. I’ll tell him you’re calling. And I’ll check our records. If you come to the office first I’ll have everything ready for you.’

The electric bell sounding the end of lunch was ringing as he got out of his car. By the time he got to the school office the children were contained in their classrooms. No pretence was being made to teach them. He heard whoops of laughter, the blare of rock music. The secretary moved away from her computer screen when she saw him and held towards him a manila envelope. He could tell from the weight that there were only a couple of sheets of paper inside.

‘It’s not much I’m afraid. After all this time…’ He knew that she would have done all she could to help. There was no point in pushing for more. He followed her directions to the staff-room. Jack Westcott was plump and round and when Porteous pushed open the door to the cluttered room, he was asleep. Despite the heat he wore a tweed jacket with a loud check and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. Porteous leaned over him to tap him on the shoulder and smelled whisky fumes. That explained the secretary’s feeling that the first period after lunch might not be a good time to speak to him. Jack Westcott had been celebrating the end of term in the pub. He opened rheumy eyes and with an unembarrassed jolt he sat up.

‘You must be the policeman chappie.’

Porteous admitted that he was.

‘Help yourself to coffee.’ He nodded unsteadily towards a filter machine in the corner. ‘I have mine black. Two sugars if the bastards have left any.’

He pressed on the arms of his chair as if to hoist himself out of it, but the effort was too much for him. The three remaining teachers in the room picked up their bags and wandered out. Porteous carried back the polystyrene cups of coffee and sat beside him.

‘I’m here about a boy called Michael Grey. Your secretary said you might remember him. We think he could have been a bit of a troublemaker.’

‘No, no no.’ The words were thundered so loud that Porteous was startled. Jack Westcott set the cup on the table and shook his head as if to clear an alcoholic fug. ‘He was a good chap, Michael. One of the best.’

‘So you do remember him?’ Porteous felt a wonderful relief. He had begun to think that Michael Grey didn’t exist at all, that he was some figment of Carver’s imagination.

‘Of course I do. I remember all the kids. Hundreds of them. That’s what teaching’s all about. Not attainment targets. Not literacy hours. Not…’ He looked about him, saw that the bulk of his audience had disappeared and lapsed in to silence.

‘Tell me about him.’

‘I didn’t teach the boy. History wasn’t one of his subjects. Shame. He’d have been an asset to the sixth-form group. Articulate, you know.’

‘So you didn’t know him well?’ Porteous felt the image of Michael Grey fade from his grasp. A ghostly apparition disappearing through a wall before it has even taken shape.

‘I didn’t say that. He was in my tutor group for nearly two years so I probably knew him better than his subject teachers.’ Westcott sat back in his chair like an elderly Billy Bunter and shut his eyes. He continued to speak, unaware of Porteous taking notes. ‘Michael joined us at the beginning of the lower sixth, a year older than most of them. I can’t remember where he came from. Some private place, I think. I know there was a problem getting the paperwork from them. It hadn’t even arrived by the time he left. I was never told why he resat the lower sixth and I didn’t ask. Not my business. Some illness perhaps or emotional problem. It happens at that age. They’re very intense. That’s why they’re such a joy to teach. I’m an old man, can’t get up to much now. So I live through them. Voraciously but second hand. Much the safest way…’

He paused for a moment. Porteous worried that he might have fallen asleep again, but the words continued in a low-pitched growl.

‘He was an exceptional boy. There was something about him. Charm, I suppose you’d call it. He had a way of winning people over.’

‘Did he talk about his home life?’

‘He was living with the Brices.’ He lapsed again into silence. Porteous resisted the temptation to prompt him. ‘Good people, the Brices. I didn’t really know them myself. Met them occasionally. Parents’ dos. The school play. But that’s what everyone said. Of course they were religious.’ He snorted, as if religion was to be disapproved of, then began to snore. He was more drunk than Porteous had first realized.

‘Did he have friends?’

‘What? Oh, bucketsful. I could give you a list. There was a girlfriend. What was her name? Shy little thing.’

‘Did he talk about his family? I mean his real family.’

‘No, but parents are an embarrassment at that age, whatever they’re like. It doesn’t mean anything. None of the kids talk about them.’

‘Is there anything else you can tell me about him?’

‘He was an actor. Brilliant. I remember his Macbeth. The best production the school ever did.’ He lurched suddenly to his feet and began to quote hammily: ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’

He flung out one arm and collapsed back into the chair. Then he fell into a deep sleep and Porteous found it impossible to rouse him.

Because it was the end of term the students must have been released early; as Porteous got to his car it was surrounded by a tide of screaming and dishevelled children. He was grateful to reach the peace of the police station. It was only when Porteous was back in his office that he opened the envelope given to him by the secretary.

There was one sheet of paper and a faded photograph. The paper was a reference, handwritten by Jack Westcott, for use in the universities selection process. It described Michael Grey in the same glowing terms he had used to Porteous. The boy’s predicted A-level grades were good. It seemed that he would have had no difficulty in securing a university place. The photograph was in fact a cutting from the local paper and included a review of the production of Macbeth. A grainy figure stood centre stage. He was dressed in a costume obviously put together by the home-economics department. In his hand he brandished a wide-bladed knife.

Chapter Five

Porteous felt suddenly restless. He re-read Westcott’s reference for Michael and set it aside. Sometimes it happened. He’d happily sit for days going over a mechanical task, then all at once feel that he was caged. He needed to pace up and down, to be somewhere, anywhere different. He’d discussed the problem with his doctor, who’d agreed that it could be a side-effect of the medication he was taking. But didn’t everyone feel like that once in a while? Didn’t everyone feel the need to break free?

He wandered down the stairs to the car park and was hovering there, trying to think of a legitimate journey he could make, when Eddie Stout returned from his meeting with the solicitor who’d handled the Brices’ affairs.

‘Any joy?’ He thought he sounded businesslike. Not like someone trying to dream up an excuse not to go inside.

‘I don’t know. More complications.’

‘We’ll talk about it over a cup of tea, shall we?’ Porteous said. ‘Not here. Not the canteen. Let’s go somewhere else.’ To his own ears he sounded hysterical, but Stout seemed not to notice, even to be pleased by the suggestion.

‘There’s quite a nice place along by our church…’

The walk calmed Porteous, made him slightly less jumpy. He felt his pulse slow. The café was attached to the church and was obviously run by its members. It was called the Mustard Seed. Besides tea and cakes it sold religious books and sentimental greetings cards. Again Porteous wondered if Stout saw him as a subject ripe for conversion. The building was new, airy, but as they went in Porteous had a fleeting smell of damp books and old ladies’ perfume.

Perhaps Stout sensed his discomfort. He said defensively, ‘It’s run by volunteers. All the profit goes to our charities. I like to support it. Anyway it’s a quiet place to talk.’

They were fussed over by two grey-haired grandmothers. There were frilly tablecloths and silk flowers, but the women made him Earl Grey to his exact specification and the shortbread was excellent. The church had been built as part of a new housing development, along with shops and a community centre. They looked out on to a street. A funeral service was taking place in the church next door. One of the undertaker’s men was standing by the hearse, smoking a cigarette. The women were interested in what was happening and kept coming out into the room to peer through the window. At a nod from Stout they retreated behind their counter and soon became engrossed in their memories of the dead man. Porteous resisted an impulse to fidget. He wanted to arrange the sugar cubes into towers, to straighten the birthday cards on a nearby stand.

‘I’ve finally met someone who knew Michael Grey,’ he said. ‘The social worker wasn’t much use. He decided the fostering arrangement with the Brices must have been informal, set up between them and the parents. He’d have no record of that. But he put me in touch with the school. There’s a teacher called Jack Westcott, head of history. He remembered Michael quite well.’

‘I’d take what Westcott said with a pinch of salt,’ Stout said tartly. ‘He’ll have been in the Percy Arms all lunchtime.’

‘Is that a regular event? I thought it was just because it was the last day of term.’

‘Regular enough. He’s retiring now, so the school hasn’t made an issue of it. He never taught Ruth but I kept an eye on what was going on.’

I bet they love you at the school, Porteous thought. He said, ‘There’s written confirmation, anyway. A reference from Westcott to help Michael get a place at university.’

Stout didn’t reply.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t know the Brices,’ Porteous went on. Thinking, You know everything about every other bugger in the place.

‘For some reason we never bumped into each other. I’ve been asking around though. Stephen Brice was an ordained priest with the Church of England. He worked in Africa before coming back to be rector here. After he retired he still did a lot of writing and teaching. People I’ve spoken to can’t remember the lad, but they say it would be just like the Brices to take someone in. They liked young people. Set up a youth group. Run, coincidentally, by Alec Reeves.’

‘Was it now?’

‘Unfortunately he’d already left the area before Michael went to live with them.’ Stout shrugged. ‘Like you said, I’ll have to let that go.’

‘What did you get out of the solicitor?’

‘Everything he had to give. The Brices died just over a year after Michael disappeared. There was a car crash on the A1. Stephen died immediately. Sylvia was taken to hospital but passed away a couple of days later in intensive care. The wills were drawn up by the couple without the help of a solicitor. He said that if he’d been involved he would have worded things a bit differently, but the intention of the couple was quite clear and he has no doubt the wills are legal documents. They were found with the rest of the Brices’ papers after their deaths. He was one of the executors and determined to carry out their wishes as best he could.’

Stout pulled a notebook from his pocket. ‘Each of the wills was identical. The estate was to be left first to the other partner. In the event of the survivor dying it should go to “our foster son, our gift from God, known as Michael Grey, so he can lead an independent life”. That was it, quoted word for word.’

‘No legacies to charity or to the church?’

‘No. According to the solicitor, they gave regularly in covenants while they were alive, but there was nothing in the will.’

‘Doesn’t that seem odd to you?’

‘I don’t think so. It wasn’t a huge estate. Only a small terraced house and a couple of thousand in savings. Perhaps they wanted to give as much as possible to Michael.’

‘Their gift from God.’ Porteous tried to keep the sneer from his voice. ‘They obviously thought he was still alive at the time of their deaths or they’d have changed the wills. And they must have believed the solicitor could trace him without too much difficulty. Didn’t they think it odd when Michael didn’t get in touch for months?’

‘The solicitor said he’d never had any other clients like them. They were unworldly, as trusting as children. They didn’t worry about things they couldn’t change.’

That’s what I try to do, Porteous thought. But I never manage it. ‘What do you make of the “known as” in the phrase “known as Michael Grey”?’

‘I supposed it meant the Brices considered him their son, even though he used a name different from theirs.’

‘Not that Michael Grey was an assumed name?’

Stout looked up sharply from his tea. ‘That would complicate matters.’

‘Wouldn’t it just.’ But, thought Porteous, if that’s the way it is I can’t change it, so there’s no point worrying.

They sat for a moment in silence. The coffin was carried from the church and replaced in the hearse, which drove slowly away. The congregation had spilled out on to the street and elderly men in shiny black suits stood chatting in the sunshine. One of the ladies behind the counter plucked up courage to call over to them. ‘Can we get you anything else, Mr Stout?’

‘Some more tea, Mavis, would be lovely.’

Still there were no other customers. After the tea had been presented Porteous said, ‘What steps did the solicitor take to trace Michael Grey?’

‘Much the same as we’ve done today. He contacted the school. He thought it most likely that Michael had gone on to further education and that the school would have the name of the college or university even if it couldn’t give him his home address. At that time he thought it would be quite straightforward to find him.’

‘But it wasn’t.’

‘Apparently Michael left quite suddenly without taking A levels.’

‘The Brices must have thought they knew where he was or surely they would have got in touch with us.’

‘I don’t know. Unless they talked to a friend about it, we’ll never find out. The solicitor did report him as a missing person when he couldn’t get an address from the school. His main objective was to prove that he’d done everything possible to find Michael. Apparently that’s a legal requirement. He advertised for information in the local Cranford paper, the Newcastle Chronicle and the London Evening Standard. It’s standard procedure.’

‘No response?’

‘Not even from cranks.’

‘What did the solicitor do then?’

‘He didn’t feel there was anything else he could do. He’d fulfilled all his legal obligations.’

‘What happened to the money?’

‘It went to Sylvia Brice’s next of kin. Because she survived her husband by a couple of days her relative was the beneficiary, not his. It was actually a nephew, a commodity broker in the city. He hardly needed the cash. According to the solicitor all the family have done well for themselves. Perhaps that’s why the Brices decided to leave the estate to Michael.’

‘I’m glad they never knew,’ Porteous said, ‘that he couldn’t be traced.’

‘There is one complication.’

‘Only one?’

‘The solicitor’s very keen for us to fix a date of death.’

‘Aren’t we all!’

Stout ignored the sarcasm and ploughed on. ‘You see, if Michael’s death predated the Brices’ then the arrangement by which the nephew inherited was fair and legal. But suppose Michael was still alive when the Brices had the car crash. Suppose he’d just gone to earth somewhere and he was killed and dumped in the lake later. Then that would affect the inheritance.’

‘In what way?’

‘The cash should have gone to his next of kin, not the Brices.’

Porteous found that he could concentrate again on the detail. The dreadful restlessness seemed to have left him. ‘I don’t think that’s likely, do you? He wasn’t the sort of lad I imagined at first. I don’t see him disappearing for months, moving from one squat to another, spending time inside. He was bright. He had a lot to lose. I think he was killed soon after he was missed at school.’

Outside, the congregation had dispersed. The grandmothers were banging pots in the kitchen to show they wanted to lock up.

Stout stood up. ‘What now?’

‘Back to the station to organize a press conference. It’s time we went public. The school gave me a photo, a cutting from the local rag, but it could be anyone. Let’s see if the paper still has the original. I know it happened nearly thirty years ago, but people round here have good memories. There’ll be friends still living in the town. And enemies. Come on, Eddie. Let’s make you a star.’

In fact Porteous took the press conference early the following evening. There was all the media interest he could have wished for. The body had been discovered because of the drought and the drought was a big story, so the national press was there. He had wanted to hold the conference in the high-school hall. The only certainty he had in the case was that Michael Grey had been a pupil at Cranford Grammar. He thought it might jog a few memories. But the head teacher wasn’t keen. He seemed to think that even after all those years murder would be bad for the school’s image. He used as an excuse the fact that the hall had already been hired out for an event in the evening. Nothing Porteous said could make him change his mind.

Instead they used the community centre next to Stout’s church. It still smelled of the lunch that had been provided for the pensioners’ club which had met earlier in the day – steamed fish and cabbage. Porteous sat on the stage behind a trestle table hidden by a white cloth. His answers to the press emphasized his ignorance. He didn’t have an exact date of death. He hadn’t traced the boy’s relatives. That was why he needed their help. All he had was a body that looked like a lump of lard – this he phrased more delicately – and an old photo of a white-haired boy with a knife.

There was one moment of excitement. In the second row sat a big woman who worked for the town’s free paper. When the photo was passed round Porteous could have sworn that she recognized the face. But when he looked for her later she had rushed away.