Good People

‘Any special friends?’

She smiled weakly. ‘You’re very tactful, Sergeant Capaldi. No. No special friends. Boyfriend. Or girlfriend.’

‘You can call me Glyn, if it helps.’

‘Glyn …’ She tasted it. Then nodded. She looked up, eyes suddenly alert now, as if she had reached a decision. ‘Do you know why he doesn’t talk to me any more?’

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ I said quietly.

‘No, I want to. I have to keep trying to understand this myself.’ She arranged the words in her head for a moment. ‘It’s because he blames me. Blames us, I should say, but his father’s not around any more to take his share. He blames us for bringing him out here. For depriving him of his culture, he tells me. His heritage. You see, now that he’s in the Army and teamed up with other Afro-Caribbean men, he’s accusing us of dragging him away from his natural background.’ She laughed self-mockingly. ‘And to think that we deliberately brought him as far away as we could from that background. To keep him safe, we thought.’

I glanced out of the window. Cold slate roofs, grazing sheep and slanting rain. About as far away from life on the Street as you could get. ‘Why Wales?’ I asked.

‘It wasn’t meant to be Wales. We just wanted to get out of the city. Boon was six months old; we wanted to be in the countryside. I thought we could try somewhere like Oxfordshire or Northamptonshire. Somewhere not too far from town. But Malcolm was offered a good job here in Mid Wales.’ She shrugged. ‘Housing was cheap, we could buy a nice place, and still be relatively well off.’

‘What kind of a job?’

‘History teacher. Head of a small department. And then he ran away.’ She smiled, punishing herself. ‘It looks like that pattern’s repeating itself.’

‘How did Boon get on?’ I asked quickly, to stop her dwelling on it. ‘Socially? As a boy growing up here?’

She looked at me, and for a moment a sparkle came back into her eyes. She had recognized the question that I had been waiting to ask. ‘This brings it round to the others, doesn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Do you like them?’

She was silent for a moment. ‘In their own way they were kind to Boon, I suppose.’

‘In their own way?’

‘It’s not their fault, they were children, but there is a certain endemic ignorance in country people. When I say “ignorance”, I probably mean intolerance. They don’t like change. They’re not used to things being different. Somehow it’s not quite right.’

‘They gave Boon a hard time?’

‘Let’s just say that they made him aware of his difference.’ She pulled a face. ‘I’m being unfair to them. They did become his friends. And they stayed that way.’

‘But … ?’ I prompted.

She smiled weakly. ‘I think that he was always made aware that that friendship was a gift. I remember one time he came home after a football match. He must have been about ten. They had been playing a team from another school who started giving him a hard time, calling him names. But what he was so pleased about was how his friends had stood up for him. “Mum,” he said to me, ever so excited, “Mum, and do you know what Gordon said back to them? Gordon said, ‘He may be a bloody Coon, but he’s our bloody Coon.’”’

Neither of us laughed.

‘He broke the bond?’ I asked. ‘He went away to join the Army?’

‘That was another difference. They all had farms or family businesses to move into.’

‘And he liked the Army?’

‘Yes. He was a bit overawed at first. A bit scared, although he wouldn’t admit it. You know, out there in the bigger world, and the regimentation, and the discipline. And then he discovered his Soul Mates, and I turned into the cruel bitch who had deprived him of the funky upbringing that they had all shared. Boys and the Hood, or whatever the hell it is.’

‘Why would he not turn up at Brize Norton?’

It was a question she had been torturing herself with. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I told you, he didn’t talk to me any more.’

‘Was there a girlfriend?’

‘If there was a current one, I hadn’t been told about her.’

‘Current?’

‘He had quite a serious affair with a Czech girl he met in Germany when he was stationed there. Then he was posted to Cyprus. As far as I know, he hasn’t had a long-term relationship since then.’

She tried to smile to cover her distress, but her hands came up to her face, and she gave in to her tears. ‘I just hope something awful hasn’t happened to him,’ she wailed.

I went round to her and put my hands on her shoulders. It had been a long time since I had tried to comfort a woman. I felt awkward and unpractised. I kept my hands light and unthreatening, and felt her muscles relax slightly. The touch began to feel both intimate and sanctioned.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘you mustn’t worry. Let me put the word out, so that we can at least discount the worst of your fears.’

She reached a hand up to lightly cover mine. It was damp from her tears. ‘Thank you.’

She walked me to the front door. I hesitated to ask, given the state she was in, but I had to keep the momentum going for Magda’s sake. I turned to her on the threshold. ‘You mentioned, when we first met, that I shouldn’t believe them when they said that young women didn’t disappear around here.’

It took her by surprise. She nodded hesitantly. Then she surprised me by smiling. ‘How about a girl going on for eighteen who leaves for school one morning and is never seen again?’

I took my notebook out. ‘Can you give me details?’

She put two restraining fingers on the notebook. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being selfish at your expense. There is no mystery. I told you that my husband left me?’

I nodded, watching her.

‘He went out that morning too. They left together. Him and the schoolgirl.’

Okay, I could sympathize with Sally Paterson. The anxiety that her missing son was causing her, coupled with the other kicks in the teeth that life had dealt. But I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t experiencing a lift of professional elation over the gift that had just been handed to me. Now I had legitimate questions to ask the group about the disappearance of their buddy Boon.

Bryn Jones didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.

‘It’s an Army matter,’ he stated drily, when I called him in Carmarthen. ‘Let them clean up their own mess.’ In that terse sentence I realized that Bryn and the military shared a history.

‘It could be germane, sir.’

‘There is nothing for it to be germane to, Glyn. And don’t even think about mentioning a missing woman.’

‘The people on the minibus were the last people to see him, sir.’

‘The last people that we know of,’ he corrected me.

‘Don’t we have a duty to his mother, sir? To try and get close to what was on his mind that last night. In case it has some sort of bearing on why he didn’t turn up for his flight to Cyprus.’

‘What’s she like?’