No Place to Hide

‘Hi, Button. How was your day?’

‘OK. You’re going to be late, aren’t you?’

Pete swirled the tea bag in the second cup until it looked the right colour. ‘Afraid so, love. We’ve picked up a new case and it’s a complicated one. We need to get the basics done before we call it a night. Fish and chips?’

‘What time?’

‘Half-seven at the latest.’ He hooked out the tea bag and dropped it in the pedal-top bin.

‘OK.’

‘Sorry, Button. I know you miss me. But not as much as I miss you.’

‘So you say.’

‘What does that mean? Are you taking your mum’s side now?’

Louise resented the fact that he’d gone back to work long before she was ready to do the same. It followed on, no doubt, from the arguments they’d been having for some time before their son went missing about the hours he put in, here at the station. He couldn’t understand why, as a nurse, she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – grasp that his job was as much a vocation as hers, the main difference being that, when her shift ended, there was someone there to replace her whereas he didn’t have that luxury.

‘It means actions speak louder than words, Dad. It’s one of the things I learned about at school today.’

‘I’m going to have to have words with that teacher of yours.’

‘She’s right, though, isn’t she?’

‘Who – your mum?’ Pete lifted milk from the fridge and started pouring it into the six mugs.

‘No, silly. Miss Jennings.’

He sighed. ‘Yes, Button. She is. At least, mostly. Me, I’m conflicted. It’s a special case. I’ve got two places I need to be and I can’t be in both at once. Anyway, I love you and I’ll be home as soon as the wicked DCI lets us out, OK? How’s your mum?’

He finished pouring the milk and put it away.

‘She’s OK. She’s watching Countdown.’

Pete’s lips pressed together. Louise had started to improve, recently, from the semi-catatonic state she’d inhabited for months after Tommy’s disappearance. His showing up in the Rosie Whitlock abduction had helped, even if he did vanish again at the first opportunity. But the fact that he clearly wasn’t coming home had knocked her back almost as soon as the fact that he was alive had spurred her on. ‘OK, love. I’ll see you later. Soon as I can, all right? Tell your mum for me. Love you.’

‘Love you too, Dad.’

‘Bye.’ He ended the call, stirred the mugs and put them all on a tray to take back into the squad room for his team. They were going to need caffeine.

*

‘Thanks, boss.’

Jane leaned across to take the last of the mugs from Pete. He atood the tray against the end of his desk and sat down.

‘There’s news,’ she said quietly.

‘What?’ Pete looked up, frowning.

Her green eyes locked onto his with a rarely seen intensity. ‘Tommy.’

Pete froze, tension crackling through him. ‘What about him?’

‘The enhanced CCTV’s back from the Co-op where Burton claimed to have dropped Tommy off on the way back into town. Still nothing probative on the car, but the boy in the shop is definitely Tommy and he looks like he’s been through the mill. I had a word with Alan Westbury. He also said that they’ve finally got hold of the assistant from that night. She said he bought plasters and bandages and stuff. Claimed he fell out of a tree. She had her doubts, but she didn’t know him, so what could she do?’

Pete slumped back in his chair, feeling suddenly weak. His son was alive and out there somewhere, just beyond reach. The confirmation was a huge relief, but at the same time utterly depressing. The boy was hurt and alone, God knew where, and too scared to approach anyone. He looked up at Jane. ‘Hold on. You spoke to Alan about this?’

Alan Westbury was one of Simon Phillips’ DCs.

‘Yes. Why not? I was following up on a legitimate lead. Burton’s our case. He admitted dropping Tommy off there. And, according to Rosie, Tommy’s a potential witness.’

‘OK.’ He nodded slowly. ‘But, don’t push your luck on my account, all right? I don’t want you getting into trouble.’

‘Heard back from one of my CIs,’ Dave said. ‘He knows of an Armenian family that’s not exactly squeaky clean. He doesn’t know them, per se, just of them, but it might be a start. I’m going to see him later.’

‘Nice one, Dave. Anyone else got anything?’ He got no response, so checked his watch. ‘OK. If I hurry, I might just catch one of my blokes. Don’t stay up too late, kids. Long day tomorrow.’ He grabbed his jacket and hurried out.

Traffic was already busy on the Heavitree Road when he stepped outside, but he took the car anyway. Working his way around the one-way system, he reached the city centre in about as long as it would have taken him to walk and turned down onto Fore Street. The high, narrow buildings hemmed the street in on either side, telephone lines criss-crossing between them like a scene from a 1970s San Francisco cop show. The shops on the ground floors were closing up, the bars and restaurants opening. Car roofs gleamed under the street lights. The pedestrians on the narrow pavements were thinning out and getting younger, practical dress giving way to decorative as the evening crowd took over.

Pete found a parking space on the steep hill and pulled in. He walked down past the end of the dark alley that led past a cinema to the scruffy, blue edifice of Mamma Stone’s club. A couple of doors further on was the pool hall he was heading for.

The place was still fairly quiet, most of the guys around the tables. Just three stood at the bar, drinks in front of them. There was no sign of Darren Westley.

Back outside, he leaned on a lamp post just beyond the side street, took out his phone and pretended to play with it. A bus went past, barely fitting between the cars parked down one side and the narrow pavement on the other. A group of girls in short, sparkly dresses stepped past him and turned down towards the cinema and the nightclub beyond.

Pete wondered how on earth they managed to avoid hypothermia with more skin exposed than covered in temperatures that were set to drop near to freezing in the next few hours. Then he saw the distinctive mop of ginger hair weaving through the crowd towards him. He pushed away from the lamp post and put his phone away as he stepped past the girls and headed quickly down the hill.

He met Westley two doors beyond the pool hall. Put out an arm to wrap around the other man’s shoulder and turn him smoothly to one side.

‘Hello, Darren. Fancy meeting you here. Do you want to get a drink somewhere?’

‘That would screw my reputation, wouldn’t it – being seen with you? What do you want?’ Up close, Westley could be seen to be suffering. He looked ill. His always-pale skin was sallow and rough. There were dark rings under his blue eyes and his mop of hair hadn’t been washed in a few days. His jeans looked stained, too, as did the T-shirt Pete could see under his brown denim jacket.

‘Just a quick word. And I was thinking about somewhere you wouldn’t be recognised. Somewhere nice, for example. Like that little place along Cathedral Passage. Plenty of noise, so you won’t be overheard if you say something impolite.’ Pete pulled him around, arm still around his shoulders, and headed back up the hill. ‘Look on the bright side. You look like you could do with a little something. Booze is better than bugger all, right?’

‘Yeah, well . . . That’s down to your lot, innit – the bugger all.’

‘What, the supply’s dried up, has it?’

‘Almost. And the price has nearly doubled.’

‘Supply and demand. The beauty of capitalism. So, it has started up again, then?’ Pete guided them across the road and up past the bus stop.

‘Yeah, just two or three days ago. It was dead for a week or so before that.’

‘So, who’s out there now? Anyone I might know?’